Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1897 — SECRETARY OF STATE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SECRETARY OF STATE

HOY/ SHERMAN DISPOSES OF A DAY’S BUSINESS. He Ib Methodical at All Times—Saves Himself by Relying Upon Hie Assistants—Meeting Office Seekers and Dealing with Dip'omats. Mr. Sherman’s Day. Washington correspondence:

ECRETARY O F State John Sherman ' works at his desk from 9 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon; then he goes home and reads novels. He is an omnivorous consumer of novels of all degrees of merit, of all colors of binding—yellow preferred. He says

they rest his mind. He considers that at the age of seventy-four he has earned a rest from the heavy literature of finance, of economics, of statesmanship, and Mr. Babcock, his secretary, says that he follows the woes of thd latter-day heroine, the truly good stiltings of the modern hero, and the sulphurous ejaculations of the Jin de siecle villain with a really remarkable interest, even if he does smile a good deal through his spectacles over what he reads. But all this happens after 4 o’clock in the afternoon, when Mr. Sherman is Mr. Sherman, and not the Secretary of State, and it is with his manner of’putting in his time as Secretary of State that this article is concerned. When Mr. Sherman became the Secretary of the Treasury a matter of twenty odd years ago he was confronted by one of the most herculean tasks that ever

loomed up before an American statesman —the resumption of specie payments —and Mr. Sherman worked away at that job, and accomplished it, from 9 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon no more, no less. “I first became connected with Mr. Sherman at that time,” said Mr. Babcock, his secretary, “and I never knew him to work longer than the office hours of his clerks. Mr. Folger permitted the secretaryship of the treasury to kill him; probably Mr. Manning did also. Neither of these gentlemen was generous to himself. A whole generation of political experience taught Mr. Sherman that lesson before he assumed the reins of the treasury, and, accomplishing more work in that capacity than did Hamilton, he emerged from the ordeal with his heMth and strength. The secret of it? He trusted his assistant secretaries; he allowed his subordinates to do the work they were appointed to do. He never permitted a paper to lie on his desk for ten minutes, and made’ disposition of his affairs as they came up. His desk was clean down to the blotting pad when he put on his hat and quit hisFoffice at 4 o’clock in the aL ternoon. The Secretaries of the Treasury who allowed the position to give them nervous prostration attempted to do the whole thing themselves; and no secretary of any government department can do that and live through his term. “As was his rule, when Secretary of the Treasury, so is Mr. Sherman’s rule as Secretary of State. When he came here he found, as he expected he would, th® the Staie Department is filled with men who have been here a long time, and who have every detail of the department's routine at their fingers’ ends. Mr. Sherman perfectly appreciates the fact that these men know more about the practical workings of their respective branches of the department than he himself could hope to acquire in a period of service here twice as long as that for which he was appointed, and he is a strong believer in the value of routine. So he lets them go ahead, keeping an eye on their work, but in no wise interfering with it without good occasion. And I guess this is the reason that he has all the hair he had when he was twenty years old, that he is as straight as a string’at seventy-four, and that his eyes are just as good to-day as they ever were.” For instance, to elaborate a little on Mr. Babcock’s talk, the country in general probably fancies that all the sounding diplomatic documents that are occasionally published in the newspapers are written by the hand of the Secretary of State himself; that he sits down under a gas lamp and gnaws his finger nail® and tousles up his hair in doing it, like any youthful member of a school of journalism preparing an essay thickly sown with “we’s.” For any Secretary of State to do this, or anything like it, no matter What the degree of his volubility, would be a sheer impossibility. Tens of thousands of words of this sort of correspondence are sent broadcast throughout the world from the American Department of State every day, always over the signature of the Secretary of State; but the Secretary of State himself no more revises it and shapes it up than does the editor of a newspaper write the police court news that appears in his paper. The momentous documents, those bearing upon great international questions, the Secretary of State docs write*hamself; but all the other diplomatic correspondence, even that relating to affairs of very considerable importance, is gotten up in the diplomatic bureau of the State Department, of which Mr. Cridier la now the

hard-working head. AB this formally and elaborately courteous correspondence, with its “renewed assurances of profound, distinguished consideration,” and so on, of course, pass over the Secretary of State’s desk, and is subject to hta revision before he signs it; tfut it is very rare that he finds it necessary to make any changes in it, so carefully and thoroughly is thia work done. Whenever any document reaches Mr. Sherman’s desk that does not absolutely require his personal attention, be sends immediately for the official to whose branch of the department the document properly belongs, and turn* It over to him with a few succinct instructions. He does not lay it aside for future consideration, and thereby accumulate a monumental pile of papers filled with possibilities of grief and labor to come. It is really quite entertaining to see Mr. Sherman cut open an official letter as it reaches him hot from the mail, glance it over and grasp it within the compass of sixty seconds, and then either send for the proper official pr else rfioot it out by messenger to the place it belongs. The only occasions upon which Mr. Sherman feels called upon to grow a little expansive are the diplomatic days—Thursday. This is the especial day that he sets aside for the reception of the diplomats, to talk over things with them confidentially, and on this day other visitors have a very slight chance of being received by him. The Secretary of State receives the diplomats in a room adjoining his office, and called the “diplomatic room”—by all odds the most gorgeously furnished governmental chamber in Washington. Running its entire length is a carved ebony table, and it is at the head of this table, seated In a tall revolving Chair, that Mr. Slier man receives the diplomats, one by one. They string int othe anteroom for their audience with the Secretary of State all the way from 10 to 1 o’clock, and In receiving them no matter of precedence Is observed. The first to arrive is the first

to be received. The Secretary of State gives these audiences for a general resume of each diplomat’s business, and it is for this reason that he only receive® them one at a time. He leans back in his revolving chair, with, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead; taking in what each of them has to say, and occasionally jotting down a note on a scratch pad in front of him. Mr. Sherman is not a linguist. The only language he can speak is English. But as there is not now in Washington a single representative of another nation who cannot also speak English, the Secretary of State has no trouble" in carrying on. these conversations.

SECRETARY OF STATE SHERMAN.