Year: 1876

business in Washington that should not be
forgotten. The moral will, no doubt, come
to us in many form that it all comes from
the tendency to display which has taken
possession of our modern Washington
society, and which has become feature of
this administration. Ever since the open
I ing of Congress we have had a succession OF
stories about the social glories of the season.
| Columns have been printed about the dia-
monds and laces, the dinners and recep-
tions, the beauty of fair women, the balls
and the routs, the constant flood of fashion
and social emulation. We seemed to recall
all that we have read of the gaudiest and
most immoral days of the French Re-
! gency. If any fact is apparent now,
as it has been ever since the panic
of 1873, it is that we should have
to take in sail and pass little time
! in economy and a modest life. For months
the duty of coming down to ''hard pan, as
it is called in the homely and expressive
dialect of the mining regions, has been the
duty of all classes. We have had a shrink
ing of values in some forms of property
amounting to bankruptcy, lowering of
wages and universal movement toward
economy. In this example, at all times COM
mendable, but never more so than at the
close of panic that brought with it wide
| spread ruin upon thousands, and the effects
! of which are still fresh, we have had no sup
port from Washington. Our rulers who are
supposed to have an interest in the wellbeing
of the country and to stimulate economy
by thrifty examples, have been lavish as
old Tweed in their displays. No one has
been more conspicuous than the unhappy
and miserable outcast who yesterday was
Secretary of War


The Secretary of War came from modest
station--an officer of the revenue, we believe
who, in the army, had won certain military
prestige by his amiability and his desire to
be ''hail fellow" with the old army
c1iques He was nominated to tho Cabinet
on the strange theory which animated the
President ut the outset of his administration
that it was not necessary to have statesmen,
but staff officers as his constitutional adj
visers not leaders of the party who had
served it for years and were high in its con-





the most attractive of this class. He had no
party record. We question if he knew to
which party he belonged when he
was summoned to his high station.
Instead of gracing the Office it was an
extraordinary honor to him. He had no in
come. his life had been spent in the army
and in the revenue service, and when he en-
Al L: I:
was very young man. Instead of follow
ing the examples of frugal men and giving
himself solely to his duties and to those
modest courtesies which are open to the
poorest of our citizens, and form the most
delightful forms of social intercourse when
they are inspired by good taste and educa-
tion and pure, virtuous life, the new Secre-
tary could not resist the attractions of his
place. He would stand we'll with the
Jenkinses of society, with the curled
darlings who float around Cabinet parlors
That fame that comes from constant news
paper notoriety, so intoxicating to weak
minds, became precious to him. A life like
this-a life of excitement and celebrity--re-
quires q large income. 1t involves a fine
house, retinues of attendants, horses and
carriages, and precious stones. The poor
Secretary, who few years since was glad to
collect the revenues in an Iowa district
found himself face to face with q terrible
temptation-terrible in this, that it appealed
to his vanity, to domestic craving for show,
to his amiability even, his desire to stand
we'll with men, to be a generous liver and
giver. And since no other method was
open, since the income allowed by law for
his Office was insufficient, he took to plum
dering the poor soldiers on the Plains


1t was not merely crime, but the meanest
kind of crime. That madame might be the
centre of the grand salon; that her form
should radiate with jewelled glory that the
wines might be rare and the viands choice
that this most fortunate adventurer should
not only be the Secretary of War, but
leader in a false and SNOWY society, he would
descend to robbing the poor soldier of
his scanty pay. Could anything be meaner
than this? Could anything show the degra-
dation that has fallen upon our society more
clearly than that these things should be toler-
ated -? Scarcely day passes when we do
not hear of the achievements of heroes of
society who only few years ago were glad
to earn a small salary, and for whose sudden
wealth there is no means of accounting.
How did Babcock, the modestly paid en-
gineer find his cottage by the sea (? How
did Shepherd amass his vast fortune? What
nffluent goddess has showered plenty upon
Robeson? How is il that Senators and
Representatives grow rich upon the small
salaries of their station? We know (alas
how sadly we know the source of Belknap's
social distinction, his dinners, his routs and
magniicence. If we ever know the trrth
about the others we shall probably have
.a.-aln tin1.r ~. b. f.,l