Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 May 1889 — WASHINGTON NOTES. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON NOTES.

Mrs. Harrison’s mail contains, every day, appeals from office seekers, to -use her influence with her husband in favor of the writers. Some of the correspondents request Mrs. Hafrisohto remind the President that their applications remain unanswered; they have heard nothing about them and fear the President haa inadvertently neglected to act upon them. They beg Mrs. Harrison to look around the office for the letters and petitions, and put them where General Harrison will be sure to see them. Some of the letters are from women. One of them recent-' ly wrote that'she was a widow with three . “girl children.” Her—hueband was killed in the war, fighting on the Southern side, and there was an unconscious pathos in the details of a poor widow’s struggle to maintain and bring up in the “fear of the Lord” those three girl children. She wanted a “post office paying only S3OO a year,” and yet “it would be a god send to me.” One man wrote recently eight big letter pages to Mrs. Harrison, because he feared that three epistles of the same length addressed to “your respected husband had failed to meet his eye.” The letter breathed the most devoted piety, truest Republicanism, and the inoat pronounced prohibition sentiments, and ended up with a request for an office of some kind that would make Hie a little easier for a man with only one leg. The clerks who were detailed from the General Land Office to go to Oklahoma to assist the land officials at the Guthrie and Kingfisher land offices, returned to Washington, Tuesday. They state thatat Kingfisher about eight hundred entries had been made up to last Friday, and at Guthrie about one thousand had been made. The total number of quarter sections in the territory open to settlement is 10,000, hence less than oneffifth of thewholelias been filed upon. The force of clerks now employed at the two land offices is believedtobe sufficient to keep up the current work. Many of the settlers, it is said, have gone to their former homes to settle their private affahs, and will return next fall to complete their entries and establish themselves permanently in the new Territory. The scarcity of water has been, to some extent, overcome by digging wells. A new schedule for appointments has just been arranged, which will undoubtedly be more satisfactory to the office seeking masses, as it gives one more day in the week to them. Appointments for the departments will be agreed upon or made as follows: Mondays, Interior Department; Tuesdays, Poetoffice; Wednesdays, Treasury. There are to be few appointments made for the other five departments, and they have not been put on the schedule, and for the filling of emergencies this schedule will not, of course, be deviated from. In some of the departments complaints are heard that the failure to make changes in the principal positions Is" having the eflect of clogging business, as the officers who daily expect to be relieved take no interest in the business, and in many instances refuse to take action. Applications for pensions are beginning to come at the Pension Office from the widows and dependent relatives of officers and men who lost their lives in the recent naval disaster at Samoa. Tne widow of Captain Schoonmaker, of the Vandalia, filed her claim a few days ago, and it has been submitted to the proper division for allowance. Her pension will amount to S3O per month. Thursday, a colored woman, whose son was employed on one of the lost vessels, appeared at the Pension Office and filed her claim for a pension. She will be allowed sl2 per month. Henry W. Rogers, a middle aged man, came here on the 4th of March for a consulate. He was locked up Saturday in the station house as a vagrant. He had nearly S2O in coppers and five-cent pieces in his clothes, the result of his solicitations on the street. He was taken before Judge Miller in the .police court, one day last week, and gave his personal bonds to get out of town. But he-waasure of getting his position in a few days more, and so he stayed. The President, Thursday, made the following no ninations: Solomon Hirsch, of Oregon, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Turkey. Clark E. Carr, of Illinois, Minister Resident and Consul General to Denmark. H. M. Sevarance, of California, Consul General at Honolulu. Thomas H- Sherman, of District of Columbia, to be Consul at Liverpool. It is rumored that Attorney General Miller will be appointed to the supreme court bench to till the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Matthews—that Secretary of the Navy will succeed Miller in the Department of Justice and that First Assistant Postmaster General Clarkson will be made secretary of the navv. The attorney-general has received a report from T. B. Needier, U. S. marshal oflnaian Territory, in regard to the conduct of himself ano deputies at the opening Of Oklahoma Territory on the 22d of April. Mr. Needles denies that he has entered any lands or town lots in Oklahoma, but says that he understands that some of his deputies have. The land office has made a ruling to the effect that if a homesteader has made improvements pn his claim, and has lived on the land himself the prescribed length of time, he has a right to a patent from the government, even if his family did not live with him during the necessarry five years of occupation. Among the nominations made by the President were James M. Townsend (colored), of Richmond, Ind., to be Recorder of the General Land Office and Col. Roberts. Robertson, of Ft. Wayne, to be a member of the Board of Regis tration and Elections in Territory of Senator Gorifaan says that he considers it only proper that the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee should go to Mr. Calvin S. Brise, and he wjd on no account allow his name to be suggested in connection with the office. > •> . . Charles D. Preston, once a delegate in Congress from Oregon, was arrested in Washington in the act of. using the frames of Senator Stewart, of Nevada, and Delegate Smith, of Arizona, on his own private mail. Gen. Felix Agnus, proprietor of the Baltimore American, is talked ot in connection with the Russian mission. The American delegatee to the Samoan conference are said to have carried every point at issue.