Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1893 — A CHANGE IN THE FIRM [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A CHANGE IN THE FIRM

:T WILL SOON BE “UNCLE SAM & OEM." Immense Interests Involved In the Shift of Administrations—Actual Expenditures Amount to Ten Millions a Week, Whichever PoUtical Party Is “in the Concern.” Machinery of the Government. Washington correspondence: In a very short while the firm of ‘Uncle Sam & Step,” HiU be dissolved, ihe business will stilFbe conducted qt the old stand, but new manage#? will 3ome in and take the places of thosd aow in control. This is the mightiest business transfer the World has ever, seen. No other nation has such vast interests, measured by the amount of money or number of people involved. Great Britain would be an exception to this if ail the operati ns of that empire were managed from t <e central seat of government in Lonajn, but they are not. Three-fourths of the empire is colonial, under home rule, except in certain matters. This is the only nation which does a “business” every year of $500,000,000. Fix an adequate conception of a sum of money like this in your mind, if you can. The chances are you can’t. The greatest business house in the world, that of the Armours, of Chicago, handles a million dollars a week; the greatest railway system, the Pennsylvania, including all lines, $3,000,000 a week. Uncle Sam’s transactions in actual expenditures reach the astonishing total of about $10,000,000 a week. This amount must necessarily increase

A GREAT GOVERNMENT BUREAU.

as the years go by. Not only is the country growing at a prodigious rate, but the functions of government are being extended to fields unheard and unthought of a few years ago. Here is a city* of 250,000 souls built up wholly by government. Take away from Washington the public employment and there would be little left. Every third family in town draws its support from the Government pay-roll and the other two live by supplying the wants of the first. Stand on one of the maip thoroughfares of the capital at 6:45 in the morning and you fail to see the throngs of people rushing to their work which are present at that hour on the streets of other cities. But just two hours later every sidewalk will be traversed by crowds of men and women moving toward the doors of the great Government departments. Five minutes after 9 the streets are almost deserted. Twenty-five hundred people have gone to their desks in the Treasury Department, nearly two thousand in the Pension office, two thousand in the big War, State and Navy Building, a thousand in the Interior Department, another thousand in the Government Printing Office, and thousands more in the other departments and bureaus. The visitor to Washington finds a convincing object lesson in the immensity of his Government, for after he has made a tour of the well-known departments and institutions, traversed their long corridors and seen literal acres of desks and square rods of open ledgers and records, he stumbles upon many other Government bureaus in unexpected places. All over the pity he finds big buildings rented by Uncle Bam and converted into hives for the transaction of his almost infinite business. Scattered about each of the principal depaitments are from three to a dozen rented buildings into which the business of the bureau has overflown after filling .he space originally set apart for it from sellar to garret To tell the truth, the Government is •apidly outgrowing all of Its quarters md many of its methods. The Capitol sn’t big enough, notwithstanding the recent building of a million-dollar addition in the shape of terrace, and adjasent buildings are bought or rented by Congress. The Census Office, which

has had at times 3,000 employes in this city, has occupied half a dozen buildings, scattered all about. The White House isn’t big enough and will have to be enlarged. The Treasury, which was big enough for all the offices under its control twenty-five years ago, is now dreadfully crowded, though bureau after bureau has moved out and found quarters elsewhere. The Congressional or National Library, now housed in the Capitol, is one of the strangest jumbles of literature and rubbish you ever saw, with books piled all over the floors and filling every nook and cranny. The finest library building in the world will soon be ready for its occupancy. To describe for you qven in the most general and rapid way the great variety of functions filled by Government would take pages instead of columns of type. Take, for example, the Department" of the Interior. It has become one of the most prodigious of all the Government bureaus. For a quarter of a century it has been the dump-heap into which everything that could not be elsewhere attached has-been thrown. The result ts that it has grown to cumbersome proportions. It is unwieldy, and a movement is on foot to take many of its bureaus and organize them into a new department to be called the Department of Commerce. This would mean a new Cabinet officer, and when the office is created and filled its incumbent will find plenty to do. The Secretary of the Interior has under his direction so many huge Government concerns that he can give little or no attention to any of them. Each, therefore, becomes a sort of independent bureau, nominally controlled by the Secretary, but actually “running wild." The tradition and organisation of tb« department are such that the

nominal head becomes little elso than a chief clerk. He must attend to so much routine business in order to fulfill the law, must sign so many letters and nominally pass upon so many j-eporta and documents, that his energies are spent in labor almost entirely clerical. Under such circumstances it is inevitable that more important duties will bo more or less neglected. While other employes finish their work at 4 o’clock sharp and hurry homeward, the Secretary remains tul 6or 7, and then takes noffie with him for examination and study matters whkh he. have attended to during the qav, but which it was physically impossible to reaqtti. Tnlfigme a Cablnet officer sitting down to his desk,.as'the Secretary of,the Interior dobs every morning, with’pigeonholes opening before him with such marks as “pensions,“ “railroads," “public lands,” “Indians," “census,” “patents,” “education." Each of these titles signifies that a vast department of the government demands his attention. The Pension Office pays out money to a million pensioners, in all $140,000,000 a year; the land-aided railroads in particular and all railroads in general are under the inspection of the railroad office; the millions of acres of public lands, agricultural and mineral, with their surveys, settlements apd litigation, form a responsibility delicate from the human and vast from every other point of view; $7,000,000 a year is the sum spent upon the Indians, and theoretically all the survivors of the aboriginal American race are under the fostering f care of the Secretary of the Interior. The Patent Office is a great department in itself, and so is the Census Office. But this is not all. The Secretary! of ithe Interior has charge of the Geological Survey of the great national parks, of irrigation of arid lands,of distribution of funds to agricultural and mechanical colleges in the States and Territories, of public documents, and of certain hospitals and eleemosynary institutions. He also exercises certain powers and duties in relation to the Territories of the United States. And the Secretary of the Interior is a mere human! As the Government expands it is evident we must increase the number of our departments and of their responsible heads or Cabinet officers.. Every one of the present Secretaries is sadly overworked. A crowd of people is always waiting to see him. A desk full of letters and documents remains untouched. Stenographers and secretaries await the moment when their chief may have opportunity to dictate letters to them. Department assistants have important matters’ to consult with him about, and as he talks and tries to think the overworked official must perform the drudgery of “signing the mail,” so that the wheels may be kept in motion. An assistant passes the sheets and manipulates the blotter, thus saving the Secretary a little manual toil. But what js needed is a subdivision of everincreasing work and responsibility of

Government, so that the men who are supposed to lead and direct may have time 1 to think.

WAITING TO SEE THE SECRETARY.

SIGNING TWO THOUSAND LETTERS A DAY.