Uncle Sam's Treatment of His Servants

FIRST, as to the wages he pays them. It is not necessary for him to give high salaries, because there are two precious commodities with which a government can reward its servants, over and above the money it pays them. One is honor ; the other is safety. These two things, honor and safety, are what the virtuous portion of mankind strive for ; and so precious are they, that when, after years of honest toil, a man has attained them, most of us join in the acclaim which pronounces his life successful. Now a government can bestow these upon every person whom it retains in its service. It can reasonably ask a man, in the full tide of a victorious career, to relinquish his vocation, and devote his life to the public service, for a comparatively small sum per annum, provided that sum per annum is made securely his until justly forfeited. It can do this, because a decent and secure maintenance, with the honor properly belonging to a government office, constitutes an entire material success. No man can get any more material good than that, for the simple reason that there is no more to get. Mr. Astor was right in saying that he derived from his estate only the few thousands a year which it cost him to live ; but those few thousands are so securely his that he can be deprived of them only by his own fault or folly. A government can place its higher servants in a position more desirable even than his, since to his safety it can add honor. There is no honor in owning a thousand houses, but it is highly honorable, under a properly constituted government, to be the trusted and faithful servant of the public.

Hence, on these terms, a government can usually have the choice of all the most suitable persons for any post. If it happens to want a judge, it can usually have the best lawyer of the most distinguished court. If it wants a man of business, it can select the best executive talent known to exist. Why should it not ? It can offer better wages than a man gets in a private station, more honor, and equal safety. We have recently seen that one of the ablest business men in the country, already in the possession of a secure fortune, was willing to give up three millions per annum for the honor and satisfaction of serving the public.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

I fear we must admit that Uncle Sam, with all his generosity and good intentions, pays to his upper servants the smallest wages a government ever paid, — wages so mean that it is wonderful he gets any faithful, efficient service at all. He does get a good deal; but he has little right to expect it. When he confers security he gives along with it a pinching, lowering, corrupting salary ; and in the majority of cases, his servants enjoy neither safety nor abundance.

I will mention a few facts with regard to the Supreme Court, the judges of which receive six thousand paper dollars a year, and the chief justice six thousand five hundred. When I was in Washington last winter, the daughters of the late chief justice were earning a scanty, precarious livelihood by copying documents in one of the public offices, at eight cents per hundred words. The father of those ladies, twenty-seven years before bis death, lured by an honorable, long-cherished ambition, gave up a practice at the Maryland bar which in a few years would have enriched him, in order to accept the post of chief justice. Whatever his errors may have been, I know he accepted the seat from a proper human motive,− that of winning the esteem of his countrymen by interpreting justice to them ; and he devoted himself wholly to the performance of its duties. I well remember hearing him, one evening, some years before his death, give a sketch of his daily and yearly round of work and travel. It was wonderful that a man of fourscore could get through an amount of labor only equalled by that of the active editor of a great daily paper. Except that he smoked like a steam-engine, his habits were regular and abstemious; but he died so poor that his family were destitute almost immediately after his last year’s salary was spent.

Other facts : A justice of the same high court, − the highest, considering all its duties, in the world, − was paying exactly his whole salary, last winter, for the board and lodging of himself and his wife. They had one parlor and one bedroom. The judge, of course, gave up the parlor to his wife and her guests, and used the bedroom for an office and consultation-room. There was a great clearing away of papers at bedtime ; for, the room being very small, the bed had to serve as an office-table. Another justice, who relinquished a practice of forty thousand dollars a year, being a Californian had to sell his paper dollars during the war at from one third to one half their nominal value ; and he spent a quarter of the year in laborious travelling. One eminent member of this court was compelled to resign his seat, − not because he could not live upon his salary, for no justice of the Supreme Court can do that,− but because he had not private income enough to eke it out. There is not a justice now sitting upon that bench who lives or can live upon his salary ; although, fortunately, it is not etiquette for a justice of the Supreme Court to entertain.

Now, reader, it is no hardship for a man to spread his papers over his bed; nor is it much more painful for the daughters of a chief justice to do copying at eight cents a page than it is for the daughters of a chief cook. I never had six thousand dollars a year, and have managed to rub on pretty well without it, and expect to continue so to do. To me, to nine tenths of all the readers of this magazine, and to nearly all the people in the world, six thousand dollars a year would be wealth. I cannot, therefore, consider it a hardship for men in general to be limited to such a revenue. But it is hard for a patriotic President to be limited in his choice for the office of Supreme judge to the very few lawyers who happen to possess an independent estate. It is a hardship to a great lawyer, formed by nature and circumstances for that sublime place, to be compelled to leave it to inferior men because he cannot live upon the salary. It is a hardship to the generous people of the United States to see men of such exalted rank in their service, − men intrusted with such difficult and important duties,− cramped and pinched and anxious for a little money, unable to keep a secretary, and too poor to afford a ride on horseback before going into court.

To this, some will be disposed to reply that any sum per annum is too much for a court from which the Dred Scott decision emanated. But on that principle you must cut off supplies from the White House, starve Congress, and suspend nine tenths of all official and all private salaries. We were all misled or corrupted by slavery, except the few original, thorough-going Abolitionists, who alone of all the inhabitants of America have a “record” on that subject of which they need never be ashamed. Because Judge Taney was perverted and corrupted by slavery is no reason for degrading forever the court over which he presided. It is worth mentioning, too, that if the Supreme Court had been decently compensated the Dred Scott decision would never have been written. Judge Taney was past eighty when he wrote it, and he would have retired some years before if he could have retained his ridiculous but indispensable little salary.

It is not necessary, I repeat, for the judges of this court to be paid high salaries ; because the appointment is for life, and the honor is immense. It is only necessary that they be paid such a sum per annum as will enable lawyers who have little property to accept seats on that bench without injustice to those dependent upon them. Judges of the same rank in England, if there were any, would receive a salary not far from equivalent to a hundred thousand of our dollars per annum. We can, and properly may, get the best lawyers at a lower rate ; for the same principle should fix the compensation of a Supreme judge as regulates the wages of day laborers. The average of unskilled laborers being two dollars a day, if you want men of average quality you pay two dollars a day. If you want only the refuse of the streets, you pay a dollar and a half. If you want the pick of the whole town, you pay two dollars and a half. The question is, What grade of lawyer do we desire for a justice of the Supreme Court? If we desire the highest, and no other, we must give him an equivalent for what he is to surrender. A lawyer of the first rank, at the present time, earns an income ranging from thirty to sixty thousand dollars a year. Hence I presume that if the salary were fixed at twenty thousand dollars a year, with a proper retiring-pension, the government could look over the bar of the whole country, and get the best living man for every vacancy. Perhaps fifteen thousand would almost answer, which is about the sum it costs to keep house decently in Washington at present.

On almost any morning during the winter, if you take your stand at the front (which is the back) of the Capitol, you may see lawyers who practise in the Supreme Court driven up to the entrance in well-appointed carriages, while the justices before whom they are to argue get out of street-cars or trudge up the steep hill on foot. It is pleasant to see the judges in the cars, and to observe that the respect due to their place is manifested by all who ride in their company. Nevertheless, if any people about the Supreme Court are to have carriages, surely the justices ought to be among them. Uncle Sam can certainly afford to pay his highest servants as liberally as clients pay their lawyers ; and it concerns both his dignity and his interest to do so. Of course, people can always be found to lake any place at any salary ; but the more able a man is, the more he can choose what he will do, and the harder he is to get. If it is desired to have truly competent persons in the public service, the public service must be made truly desirable.

What a wise thing Congress did, in 1855, in establishing the Court of Claims ! The founding of that court was a step forward in the art of government. The late Sir Frederick Bruce, British Minister in Washington, who was an intelligent observer of men and things in America, used often to say that there was nothing in Washington which seemed to him more admirable or more original than that court. “It is,” he once said, “ a grand and noble thought that any citizen can go before a legal tribunal, and maintain his rights against thirty millions. Nothing American in America has so deeply impressed me.” When he met one of the judges of the court, he was never weary of listening to explanations of its procedure and narratives of its cases. His appreciation of the value of this court would have been still greater if he had lived in Washington before it was established, and had witnessed the bad lobbying and weary waste of time and resources which it has in some measure prevented. Before the Court of Claims existed, an honest claimant might well doubt whether any amount of money could compensate him for the intrigue, solicitation, and anxiety involved in the prosecution of a claim before Congress; and, at the same time, a dishonest claimant might doubt whether a claim could be so ill-founded that indomitable lobbying might not weary Congress into conceding it. A citizen can now go before this court, present his claim, establish it by evidence and argument ; and, if the court allows it, he has but to exhibit proof of the fact at the treasury, and draw the money. Very large claims and war claims are alone exempted from its jurisdiction ; but probably the time is not distant when all disputed claims of whatever kind or amount will be submitted to it for adjudication. Not only does this court decide upon claims, but it establishes principles. Its decisions are now a rule in the departments for the guidance of heads of bureaus. The volumes containing reports of cases tried before it, prepared by Judge Nott and Mr. Samuel H. Huntington, show, even to the unprofessional mind, that this court contributes its share to the maintenance and elucidation of justice in this land.

The reader will observe that in constituting this court Congress has nobly parted with a portion of its sovereignty. When it was first established, a claimant had to procure a decision in his favor from the court, and then go to Congress and enter upon a course of lobbying to get the money appropriated. This was heart-breaking work to many a wretch ; nor was the time of Congress always saved by decisions which had no effect until Congress ratified them. The court was in fact no more than an adjunct to the Committee on Claims. At length, Congress wisely gave to the decisions of the court a practical validity by empowering the Secretary of the Treasury to pay the sums awarded, − securing to the disappointed claimant a right of appeal to the Supreme Court.

Every reflecting person, I think, will feel that judges intrusted with powers so peculiar and so great, − judges singularly liable both to temptation and suspicion, − ought to be lawyers of very high rank and men of the highest character. In other words, they ought to be men who in private life can earn a liberal income. In 1855, when a dollar was a dollar, Congress fixed the salary of the judges of this court at four thousand dollars a year. It was not enough then ; but the salary has never been changed, except by the depreciation of the currency. Consequently, it now possesses about one half of its original value, and a judge who has no private income is in sorry case. Wealthy and powerful claimants come before him, some of whom are foreigners whose only care is to get their claim allowed. Thriving lawyers plead at the bar, gain large fees, go to luxurious homes, and enjoy every facility for the doing of their work ; while the judges, if they have no estates and are blessed with families, will be in doubt sometimes whether they can really afford to ride in the street-cars.

Now, human nature being always human nature, ability and force will as a rule take the path in life that leads to a good front-door, with a nice saddle-horse tied to the post before it. Therefore, if a judge on the bench gets four thousand dollars a year, and the leading lawyers at the bar get twenty thousand, you will observe, at last, that the first-rate men remain at the bar, and the third-rate men are on the bench. Not at first, because the permanence of the appointment counts for much, and the honor for more. But in the course of time, if you persist in condemning judges to a lifetime of respectable pinch, the valuable men will resign and decline, until the peculiar honor once attached to the title of judge is gone. I say nothing of the temptation to which a poor judge in such a court may be exposed, because we have not yet sunk to the point when an American judge permanently appointed can be thought of as subject to temptation. But keep judges’ salaries as they are for a few years more, and there will be no justice obtainable in the United States, except by purchase. If a seat on this bench should become vacant to-morrow, the President might be driven half mad by the multitude of applicants ; but if he were to offer it to each of the hundred most eminent lawyers in the country, it is probable that it would be delined by them all. Most of these would probably reply: “Mr. President, you do me great honor, but I really cannot afford it ; the luxury is beyond my means.”

Every senator, I believe, without exception, and nearly every member of the House, will own, in conversation, that the salaries paid to judges, heads of departments, some heads of bureaus, and other officials, are insufficient; but many senators hang back from increasing salaries, for fear of an imaginary fool of a farmer, who is supposed to begrudge the servants of the public a just compensation. Whenever I have been in the country lately, I have looked about in search of that narrow-minded agriculturist, but I have not been able to find him. The farmers understand this matter as well as senators ; they know perfectly well that if the government wants a diamond or a man, it must go into the market and pay what the article will fetch from other purchasers. The only question is, what grade of diamond or man does it want ?

Sir Frederick Bruce might well be interested in the Court of Claims; but there is something in Washington a thousand times more wonderful and more original than that. Like other wonders, however, it escapes observation because we are so familiar with it. Walk over the Treasury building; mark the thousands of persons employed therein ; consider the nature of their employment ; contemplate the magnitude and difficulty of the task imposed upon the head of that department; think of the wide-spread ruin that could result from an error on his part, and the lasting good that might come of one superior method. Consider the trust reposed in him, the ease with which that trust could be violated, and the absolute certainty we have that it never is, never has been, and never will be violated. Think of all this, and then reflect upon the fact that out of those inconceivable millions that pass under his control, we permit him to retain for his own use not enough to keep house upon. “ How much rent do you pay here in Washington ? ” asked some one of Mr. Evarts last winter. “ My salary,” was the reply. This is the great wonder, not of Washington only, but of the world. The pyramids of Egypt are commonplace compared with it. The man that supplies the Treasury building with any one of the leading articles used in it would turn up his nose at eight thousand dollars a year. Fortunes were made in the mere erection of the edifice. Yet Secretaries of the Treasury, as they have gone down those granite steps in the afternoon, have doubtless often fallen into a deep meditation upon the ways and means of getting over the next rent-day. They have generally been men of small fortunes. Hamilton was obliged to resign and go home to earn money for his large family, and Gallatin was never in very liberal circumstances. Gallatin had an opportunity, once, of gaining a large fortune in Paris without dishonor. “No,” said he to the representative of the great house which he had obliged, − “ no ; a man who has been intrusted with the finances of his country must not die rich.” In this lofty spirit the office has generally been held.

The time has come, I think, for putting the members of the Cabinet a little more at their ease. The people do not want to be under an obligation to them of a pecuniary nature. They did not want Mr. Stanton to work during the war as no galley-slave ever worked, and yet live in part upon his private fortune ; nor is it wise to subject human nature to such a staggering temptation. The man whose signature confers place and wealth ought not to be left to grapple with the embarrassments of an insufficient income. Uncle Sam has a large although not unencumbered estate, and he can well afford to maintain those who serve him in a style suited to the importance and dignity of their duties. To keep house in Washington on the scale adopted by Mr. Seward, who lived plainly enough and gave perhaps twenty moderate dinners a year, costs about fifteen thousand dollars per annum ; which is about the present value of the salary which Hamilton found inadequate during the presidency of General Washington. Hamilton, however, had married a rich man’s daughter, who had probably a rich man’s daughter’s ideas as to what are the necessaries of life. His vices also were expensive, or, to speak more exactly, his vice. The virtuous public men of the present day could probably retain the post of Cabinet Minister or Vice-President for a few years upon fifteen thousand dollars a year without seriously encroaching upon their private fortunes ; and a salary of that amount would give the President a much wider range of choice. “ Perhaps,” said Mr. Wade last spring, “ I should have taken office, if it had been offered me ; but the pay is inadequate. I could not have held the position and kept house in Washington as Cabinet Ministers are expected to, for the salary. It would have taken five thousand dollars a year more from my private means, unless I’d steal, and I ’m too old to begin to steal.”

The grade of officials just below that of Cabinet Minister, the class represented during the war by Mr. G. V. Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, are persons of great importance in Washington. The supposed necessities of party sometimes induce a President to fill a place in the Cabinet with any old figure-head that happens to be lying about. In any case, the person next in rank to the chief exercises great authority, and will generally be to his department what a first lieutenant is to his ship. It is admitted on all hands that the sudden expansion of the navy of the United States during the first years of the war, resulting in a real blockade of an immense line of coast, and in the immortal victories of Farragut and his comrades, was the ne plus ultra of administrative achievement. It is also admitted that this was chiefly the work of Mr. G. V. Fox. Now, it was no hardship to Mr. Fox, in those glorious years, to serve his country for less money than would pay for the board and lodging of a small family in a third-rate hotel. On the contrary, it was a sweet, a high, a priceless privilege. The meanness of the salary enhanced the glory and fascination of the post. It must have been delicious, sometimes, when he had signed contracts that would enrich half a dozen men, to contemplate the leanness of his own exchequer. It must have been a gratification bordering on the sublime, just after he had asked a creditor to wait till next quarter-day for his money, to read in a Democratic newspaper of the enormous sums he was making from his interests in navy contracts. Put human nature cannot be kept at that pitch of exaltation in which we lived from 1861 to 1865 ; nor is there any need that it should be. In the long run, bread-and-butter, ns Ex-alderman Johnson styled it, rules the world; and, when the war was over, Mr. Fox was more than justified in resigning his place in Washington, at thirty-five hundred dollars a year, to accept the superintendency of a manufactory at Lowell, at seven thousand. Seven thousand dollars a year at Lowell is about equal to eleven thousand dollars a year at Washington.

The simple question for us to consider is : Are men of great capacity wanted in government offices, or are they not? If they are, we must pay them what others find it worth while to pay them. Mr. Fox represents a class of able men, nearly all of whom were compelled to retire from the public service after the close of the war because the salaries attached to their posts were inadequate. I mention him by name, because he is well known to the public, and also because I have never seen him, and do not even know whether his was the creative mind of the Navy Department. Some mind was ; and the principle is the same, whether it goes by the name of Fox or another. To this class of officials, − assistant secretaries, heads of important bureaus, and others, − Uncle Sam, it is to be noted, pays nothing but money. Their names become known to the public only by accident ; for it is part of the etiquette of their place to see to it that the honor of what they accomplish shall be awarded to their nominal chief; nor is their appointment permanent. A man with sense enough to know wherein consists human happiness can accommodate himself to a narrow income, provided it is safely his own. But to an income of any magnitude whatever, subject to be taken away without notice and without cause, a man of sense and ability was never yet reconciled. To accept such a place, in ordinary times, is a confession of incompetency.

This brings us to the rotation-in-office question, to which attention has been powerfully recalled of late by the able and patriotic labors of Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island. Still more powerfully has attention been called to it by the recent rebellions in the State Prison at Sing-Sing, which were said to be caused by the sudden dismissal of Republican officers to make room for a number of Democratic politicians who had to be provided with places. That event, doubtless, aggravated the state of things existing in the prison ; and probably the stanchest Jackson-Democratic father and housekeeper in that part of Westchester County has had doubts this year whether the system of rotation is quite applicable to the officials of an establishment containing thirteen hundred criminals. As that father made his rounds at night, locking up house, barn, and stable, and reflecting upon what might happen if that mass of ruffians were let loose upon an unprotected village, I fear he did not feel all that veneration for his departed chief which it is the pride of Jackson Democrats to exhibit. It perhaps occurred to him that to govern with firmness, humanity, and wisdom so peculiar a community demanded other qualifications than the single one of being able to “ carry ” a ward or a county, and that those other qualifications ought at least to be thought of in making prison appointments. “ I don’t see what is the use of having such men as John Clark here,” said a high official in the Philadelphia custom-house, of one of its clerks. “ Why not ? ” asked a bystander The reply was “ He has been here six or seven years, and he has never carried his precinct.”

We have now tried the Jackson rotation system forty years and six months. How has it worked?

I admit that there is something plausible to be said in its favor. I am writing this article on Cape Ann, part of the “ stern and rock-bound coast ” of Massachusetts, which is now getting sliced up into wonderfully long pieces of fine granite, and carried off in schooners to various Atlantic ports for building and paving. Fish and granite are the products of this rugged, romantic region. All day long, under the hot summer sun and in the cutting winter winds, the quarrymen swing the great hammer, or hold the perilous boring-tool, or manage the ponderous machinery that lifts and loads the huge masses, or yell like tragedians at the writhing oxen. The men of Cape Ann who do not work in the quarries go for codfish in schooners to the coast of Labrador, to the banks of Newfoundland, and elsewhere, not shrinking from the cruel tempests of February and March ; or they cruise up and down the coast in search of the uncertain mackerel, coming in sometimes, after weeks of dangerous voyaging, without a fish ; or else they court destruction in a little flat-bottomed boat called a dory, and gather the harvest of the sea within a few miles of the shore, supplying lobsters at four cents each for canning, and sending fresh fish to the Boston markets. Life on Cape Ann wears a serious aspect, and is maintained by fierce grappling with hostile forces.

But here and there on the Cape there is a man who walks serene, listening to the musical ring of the hammer which he never lifts, and viewing the boundless peril which he never shares. The whole fleet of mackerel-men and cod-men may come in empty; but it is naught to him, his salt pork and biscuit are secure. Nobody may want granite, and the music of the quarries may cease ; but he surveys the scene with a tranquil mind, and draws his pay as before. As long as the President of the United States is a Republican, and the member of Congress who got him his place continues to be re-elected, and does not want the office for some one else, so long he remains a gentleman of leisure, in the midst of a most laborious people. Such are the lighthouse-keepers, the inspectors of customs, the postmasters, and a few others. How natural that the men of the Cape should think it right to take a turn, now and then, at these easy employments and this certain pay! Why, they ask, should Neighbor Jones always walk up and down, looking out for smugglers, catching one every year or two, and the rest of us always split the granite and hunt the mackerel ? Turn about is fair play, they think ; and there will never be wanting politicians to sympathize with them in this view of the subject.

Such is the light in which rotation appears upon the granite coast of New England. But none of these stalwart men would begrudge a light-house to a one-legged soldier or the widow of a drowned fisherman ; and when the government is put once more upon a basis of common sense, light-houses will invariably be reserved for persons whose circumstances and past services mark them out from all mankind for just such posts. Nor do the men of this Cape envy the lot of a certain postmaster, the slenderness of whose emolument exactly balances the more desirable circumstances of his place, and keeps him equal to the rest of the village. Still less would they be disturbed, if the incumbent of such an easy post were a woman. They do envy the case of some of the customs-officials ; and well they may. Several of those gentlemen have very little to do, and that little is not arduous ; while the pay is more liberal than it would have to be, if the appointment were permanent. Nor would the present salaries be deemed excessive, nor excite envy in the breasts of honest men, if they were the late reward of faithful service in lower posts, for which every man’s son might compete. These hardy fishermen do not feel it a grievance that some of their neighbors own a share in a schooner, which gives them a double portion of the profit of voyages to the toil of which all hands equally contribute. But when Uncle Sam comes along and bestows sudden, unearned ease and honor upon one of their number, they feel that, the next time he looks in upon Cape Ann, he ought to put that man back into the quarry or the schooner and give some one else a respite from toil and trouble. But our respected Uncle ought not to bestow sudden, unearned ease and honor upon any man. This is one of the many wrongs of rotation ; and, hence, I must reckon Cape Ann an argument for permanence.

This remote and stony Cape is representative on this subject. Having been for many years interested in the question, I have sought opportunities of learning how it appears to average voters, the owners of the United States, who will have finally to decide it. At present, the average voter is under the impression that we ought to take turns at enjoying what few good things Uncle Sam has to bestow. This feeling is the difficulty to be overcome.

Cape Ann, on the other hand, has afforded a pleasing illustration of the solid, enduring happiness which can result from a very small income, when it is not precarious. Yonder lighthouse, built in the year 1800, was occupied for forty-nine years by the same keeper. The salary was three hundred dollars a year; but a garden furnished the family with vegetables, and the ocean with fish. They were noted the country round for innocent cheerfulness and bountiful hospitality, and the old man, when at length the lamp of his own life went out, left an estate worth seven thousand dollars. Quiet, stable welfare like this can exist wherever there is a secure livelihood suitably bestowed. Lamb had it from his place in the India House. Hawthorne might have had it in the Salem custom-house. There are people in this world who possess high, rare, and exquisite qualities ; people who can render the most perfect service in posts the duties of which are fixed for them ; and yet they are wanting in a certain audacity and energy that fit men to make a successful career of their own. How excellent a thing for a bank, a company, or a government to give permanent welfare to such in return for admirable service ! It is idle to urge men to be moderate in their pursuit of fortune, so long as the possession of property is the only means of securing independence and dignity. In the United States a man is a fool who does not sacrifice to the acquisition of wealth everything except health and honor; since wealth alone gives a platform upon which a happiness can be established. Faraday might well decline to make a fortune of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds by doing chemistry for men of business ; he had a secure eighty pounds a year, three rooms, fuel, and candles ; and, having these, he could afford the ineffable luxury of spending his life in the discovery of truth.

I turn from Cape Ann to a scene which I witnessed in the White House a few days after the last Inauguration. If the Jackson rotation system appears endurable upon the sea-coast, it is entirely hideous at Washington.

About nine o’clock one morning, on going by the President’s house, I observed a great number of men standing about the front-door, and many others walking towards it, as though something was going on and the public had been invited to attend. I joined the throng and entered the hall. The President’s family had not yet taken possession, and several upholsterers were making wild efforts to take up the carpets ; while parties were waiting for some one who had gone to find some one else who had the key of the East Room, which they were desirous of seeing. Meanwhile, they strolled about in the smaller show apartments, stumbling over rolls of carpet, inhaling dust, and viewing works of art. But most of those who entered this private residence of a respectable family went up stairs, where the President was supposed to be. Following the stream, I found myself in one of the suite of rooms of the east wing, adjacent to the apartment in which the President usually receives people who call on business. These large rooms were filled with men, standing in groups talking eagerly together, or sitting silent and anxious on the seats that lined the wall. The roar of conversation was like that of the Chicago Exchange when wheat is coming in freely, and the air was as pestiferous as at an evening party the giver of which keeps four stout colored men opening champagne, but forgets to let in a little inexpensive atmosphere. The men here assembled had a sufficient, capable aspect ; many of them were persons of note in politics; many had distinguished themselves in the war. Strolling about among them, and passing from room to room, I came at last to the DOOR, − the door of doors, − which all of those present desired to enter. Some of them had crossed a continent to enter it; and there it was, tight shut, guarded by two ushers, and two hundred people were waiting to go in. It was not necessary for any one to be told that this door led to the President’s office. There was a lane of men, terminating at the door, and extending back into the middle of the room, each man of which looked at the door as though it were beef and he had tasted nothing for three days and three nights. I saw then what the poet meant who first spoke of people devouring objects with their eyes. These men had a hungry look. With their eyes they were eating up that dingywhite door. So intent were they upon it that they were unconscious of themselves, of their attitude and expression ; and, when at last the door opened, it was awful to see how they scanned the face of the messenger and watched his movements. And so they waited, hour after hour. Failing to get in one day, they would try again the next. Some of those then present had been trying for four days for admission, and had still no expectation of getting in very soon. Many had given up the attempt to see the President, and were waiting there in hopes of speaking with their senator or member, who would convey their wishes to him.

A scene similar to this, but on a smaller scale, was going on wherever there was a person in Washington who had easy access to the President. A member of Congress who was supposed to have any particular influence with him would have a hundred applications a day for the exertion of that influence. One member, who was not on the best terms with the President, would have twenty callers in one evening, asking his aid in procuring a favorable presentation of their “ claims.” Washington swarmed with office-seekers. At the Capitol, when a messenger arrived from the White House with a packet of nominations, the rush of men toward the Senate wing of the building was like the thundering tramp of buffaloes across a prairie.¹

I might dwell upon the waste, the anguish, the indecency, the degradation, of this scramble. I might speak of men coming to Washington with high hopes and full pockets, who begin by living at Willard’s and treating with champagne, then remove to a less expensive hotel, afterwards to a cheap boarding-house, and finally, after subsisting awhile at “free lunches,” borrow money to go home, where they arrive haggard and savage. I might speak of the impossibility of making good appointments in such circumstances ; of the much better chance that brazen importunity has at such a time than merit; of the greater likelihood that a noisy eleventh-hour convert will get an office than a man who has borne the burden and heat of the day, but has omitted to come to Washington ; or of the infernal cruelty of working a President to within an inch of his life in the first six weeks of his term. But all things cannot be said in one short article. The great evil of the system, as it is seen at Washington, is, that it compels the chief persons of the government to expend most of their time and strength upon a matter that properly belongs to subordinates. When President Grant came into office, there were several matters of great importance which demanded his attention and that of his Cabinet; such as Cuba, the Alabama claims, reconstruction, and the adoption of a financial policy. The consideration of such subjects is the high duty which the Constitution assigns to the heads of the government, and in order to get that duty done the people gave General Grant their votes. But during the first week of his term he was worn out, day after day, by listening to the claims and settling the differences of people whose existence would naturally be known to a President or a Cabinet Minister only through the Blue Book.

And this, let me add, is the chief labor of a President all through his term. “What is it to be President?” I once asked of a gentleman who had filled the office ; “ what is the principal thing a President does ? ” The reply was, “ To make appointments.” A mere lounger about Washington can see that this is true ; and it is manifest to all who look over such documents as that containing the testimony taken by the Covode Committee in 1860. The reader of that choice volume perceives that Mr. Buchanan wrote long letters and spent laborious hours in forcing upon the Philadelphia Navy-Yard an incompetent head-carpenter. The authorities of the yard sent back word that the man could not pass his examination. No matter; the President of the United States would have him appointed, and he was appointed ; for he had rendered services in the Presidential election which a Buchanan could not overlook. The following is a portion of the man’s sworn testimony : −

“ Question. Do you mean to say that you gave [naturalization] papers to parties who subsequently used them in elections without ever going before a court to make the necessary proof [of five years’ residence] ?

“ Answer. I have given a few.

“ Ques. Well, how many did you distribute yourself ?

“ Ans. Two or three thousand.” ² This was the man− Patrick Lafferty was his name − whom the President of the United States put over the heads of American mechanics. I do not adduce the fact to illustrate the corrupting tendency of rotation, but to show the petty nature of the employments to which it reduces the head of the government. I am not sure that Mr. Buchanan was aware of the kind of service which his Irish friend had rendered him ; but the assiduous Lafferty swore that when he failed to pass his examination he went to Washington and conversed with the President upon the subject for an hour and a half. We also find the President, upon the pages of this huge volume, meddling in the pettiest details of the pettiest ward elections, and superintending the division of the vulgarest portion of the spoils. He arranged the division and subdivision of the profits made on the public printing, and he parcelled out among three of his Pennsylvania neighbors the percentage allowed on the price of the coal purchased for the government. Do we elect a President for such work as this ? Mr. Lincoln, too, was immersed in the most trivial details of administration. I think he must have spent more than half his time, and a full third of his strength, in arranging affairs of which, in a properly constituted public service, he would never have heard; and this, with a million men in the field, and the existence of the nation at stake. That the same system prevails to-day I have a hundred proofs before me ; but they are needless, for every one knows it to be the case. We have even read lately a printed notice, signed by the commandant of a navy-yard, in which it is stated that “no person hostile to the present administration will be employed in the yard,” and that “ the Secretary of the Navy particularly desires” the enforcement of this rule.

Now, human nature being what it is, we may be sure that nine Presidents out of ten will make nine appointments out of ten with an eye to their own reelection, or the election of their candidate. They will generally make haste to have the fifty thousand office-holders active agents in their behalf; and since “ power over a man’s support has always been held and admitted to be power over his will,” an ambitious and able President can easily convert all that large army of men from servants of the public into personal retainers. John Tyler, of precious memory, for example, employed his postmasters in circulating copies of a campaign Life of himself. They were called upon by a circular letter, franked, to subscribe for and spread abroad “fifty or sixty copies,” which would be furnished “ at the low price of fifty dollars a hundred.” This circular letter was accompanied by a note penned in the President’s own office by his son and secretary. The following is a copy of the note : −

“(Private.) PRESIDENT’S HOUSE, 1st Dec., 1843.

“SIR: − As it is considered of importance, in justice to the President, to circulate among the people the work spoken of in Mr. Abell’s letter accompanying this, you will confer a favor on the undersigned by taking such measures for that end as Mr. A. suggests.

“ Prompt attention and a liberal subscription will render your services still more useful.

“ I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

“JOHN TYLER, JR.”

This letter, I believe, correctly represents a system which time has not materially changed. As a rule, we shall not have in the Presidential chair such blundering people as Tyler and Johnson, who let their clumsy hands be seen from behind the curtain of the show ; but no President who could be nominated by the present style of politicians can be reasonably expected to refrain from using his power to perpetuate his power. Rotation belittles, personalizes, and disgraces the government in its every department and grade. From peculiar circumstances, I am thoroughly familiar with the working of the system, and I am convinced that Mr. John Stuart Mill’s recent utterance on this subject is the truth. He well says that rotation is the evil of our government,³ and that professional politicians are the great pervertels of free government. Rotation has created professional politicians, and by rotation alone they are kept in being. The order did not exist before Jackson debauched the government : it will cease to exist when Mr. Jenckes has reformed it.

At the penitentiary upon Blackwell’s Island, near New York, the superintendent once pointed out to me a young man (not more than twenty-eight) who had been in the prison fifty-seven times. Other young men there had been “ sent up ” thirty times, twenty times, eighteen times, ten times; and, I think, comparatively few were serving their first term. This led to the disclosure of the fact that most of the crime in the large cities of the world is committed by a small number of professional villains, who pass their short lives between the prison and the streets ; not unfrequently getting themselves arrested and convicted when times are hard. Thus the Tombs in New York has, like the Astor House, its regular customers; and Blackwell’s Island is, like Newport, a place of resort; and the virtuous portion of the people pay three or four millions per annum for the support, arrest, and entertainment of a few thousand individuals who have adopted stealing as a vocation. We support them out of prison and we support them in prison. Rotation in office has called into existence an order of politicians as distinct as the order of thieves ; and the inhabitants of New York do not need to be informed that between these two orders there is an affinity, such as that which we suspected between Buchanan and Lafferty. If anything is certain, it is this : the rotation system is developing this affinity into an alliance. In the city of New York, we all see this ; but the country at large is so sound, and there are still so many respectable men in office and so much of the public business is tolerably done, that the tendency is less apparent to those who live out of the large seaports. But the tendency exists. Honorable men, who are still occasionally sought for office, instinctively perceive it, and shrink from contact with a class who seem to have something in common with men of prey which easily develops into an understanding, into a partnership.

That coal agency, already referred to, may serve as an example of the way in which political transactions shade off into criminal ones. Half a dozen applicants for the agency were in Washington, all of whom had spent money and wind in the preceding election, and all neighbors or friends of the President. Some of the applicants and their adherents met and talked the matter over, and they agreed at length that one of their number should be appointed agent, and that the emoluments of the office should be equally divided between him and two others. It is hardly necessary to add that neither of the three knew anything particular about coal, or even took pains to inquire ; one of them being a physician, another an editor, and the third an omnibus proprietor. The business was “turned over to Stone, Tyler, & Co.,” who “became at once the purchasers for, and the sellers to, the government.” I am happy to be able to add, that when Mr. Getz, editor of the Reading Gazette, came to understand the arrangement, he declined to take any share of its profits ; so that the doctor and the omnibus man had the whole fourteen thousand dollars a year to divide between them. I do not say that this was as bad as picking pockets, but only that it was akin to it.

It is ludicrous to observe sometimes how entirely the public service is lost sight of under this insensate system, and what absolute puppets the lower officials are in the games of the higher. If a member of Congress, for example, bolts on an administration measure, the President turns out of office the postmasters, light-house-keepers, customhouse clerks, and navy-yard laborers who owed their appointments to him. There is something about this so exquisitely absurd, that it is provocative of laughter rather than horror, as when we read of those usages of barbarous tribes which have the peculiarity of being both deadly and silly. We are so constituted that murder itself becomes laughable if a Chinaman is hung up by his pigtail; and suicide excites mirth when we read of a Japanese nobleman going aside and quietly ripping himself up. So, when we read of Buchanan turning a mechanic out of his shop because a New York member voted against Lecompton, we can hardly resist the comic incongruity of the transaction. I cannot read seriously such a passage as the following from the Covode Report, although I know that precisely the same system prevails today, and that it is as monstrous as it is ridiculous : −

“The division of patronage among members was well known in the Brooklyn navy-yard. Each master workman understood to whom he and each of his fellows owed their places. Thus the constructive engineer, the master plumber, and the master block-maker represented Mr. Sickles ; the master painter represented Mr. Learing ; the master spar-maker, master blacksmith, and timber-inspector represented Mr. Maclay. . . . . Lawrence Cohane was appointed master carpenter upon the nomination of Mr. Haskin, in the general division of patronage. He was re- Each of these representative master mechanics selects and discharges the men of his shop, and he is expected to do this with the most implicit deference to the will and political interest of the member who caused his appointment. But to this, it seems, other members sometimes object. Thus, Mr. Haskin procured the appointment of Master Carpenter Cohane ; but we find the Hon. John Cochrane addressing the unfortunate Cohane thus : “ I will have my proportion of men under you ; if you do not give them, I will lodge charges against you. . . . . I will make application that you be turned out. The bearer will bring me an answer.” The master painter, about the same time, took the very great liberty of discharging a man for habitual drunkenness. The man’s member of Congress made the following remark to the master painter in consequence : " You may set it down as a fact that I will have you removed if I can, if you don’t put that man back again.” The drunkard was not put back again, and the master painter was removed. Another member writes to the master of one of the shops : “As a general thing, Hugh McLaughlin, master laborer, knows who my friends are, and he will confer with you at all times.”

moved on account of Mr. Haskin’s course upon the Lecompton Constitution.”

In these absurd contentions the Secretary of the Navy himself did not disdain to mingle, and of course we find him siding with the aggrieved member and adding the weight of his positive order to effect the member’s purpose. Equally, of course, it was the refuse of the mechanics of New York and Brooklyn who usually came to the yard backed with a member’s demand for their employment; and thus the Brooklyn navyyard, once the pride of ship-builders, to be employed in which was formerly a coveted honor, was “ reduced to a mere political machine where idleness, theft, insubordination, fraud, and gross neglect of duty prevailed to an alarming degree.” Of course ! An employer who treats his workmen thus deserves to be served so, and always will be. The wonder is, that any ship built in the yard kept afloat long enough to reach Sandy Hook.

A noteworthy circumstance is, that members of Congress of any intelligence, who employ this system, are as keenly alive to its absurdities and its ill consequences as we are who pay the cost and suffer the shame of it. That very John Cochrane who would have his share of the navy-yard carpenters has solemnly declared that the system is an unmitigated evil, injurious to the purity of elections, injurious to the mechanic and his work, and a frightful nuisance to members, who are beset at every turn by applicants. Another member has testified: “ My house was run down. I was addressed upon the subject in the street ; when in the lower part of the city on business I would be pursued ; and I really could find no rest by reason of the great number of such applications. . . . . This whole system tends, in the first place, to the demoralization of the laboring class to their serious detriment, and, in my judgment, to the degradation, personal and political, of members of Congress.” As men and citizens they all comprehend this; while as politicians they insist on having their share of its supposed advantages.

“ We shall be broken up,” said Senator Trumbull of Illinois, in April last, “unless some administration will set the example, or some legislation will compel it, of making the price of office good behavior only. The scenes and the scramble of the last month have been disgraceful, as you know. But you do not probably know the effect of this periodical rotation upon Congress. For example, I want the Secretary of the Treasury to give my man an office. I go up to the department and wait there for an audience, long or short, as the case may be. The Secretary speaks encouragingly. Next day I go up again, and he is not quite so sanguine. It is by this steady persistence that offices are obtained here. Not merit, nor recommendation, nor impulse, but dingdonging, obtains the offices. Well, the Secretary has a financial policy, perhaps. How can I, as a senator, speak independently of his policy, while my man is in a state of suspense ? Thus the executive part of the government paralyzes in a great degree the legislator’s independence.”

A striking case in point, which clearly illustrates the working of the system, was furnished by a late collector of the New York custom-house, who desired to represent the United States at the court of St. Petersburg. The Senate frustrated his ambition, and he took his revenge by turning out of the customhouse thirty clerks and porters whom a New York senator had recommended for appointment. A gentleman who was present when the thirty new men were sworn in asked the collector whether the vacancies had been created in order to retaliate upon the senator for his adverse vote. He did not deny the soft impeachment, though he pretended that the thirty dismissed were “incompetent.” He concluded his answer to the question in these words : “ Blood is thicker than water. If a man cheats me I am going to pay him off for it. I did not want the mission to Russia particularly. It would have cost me ten thousand dollars a year to go there. But then, when a man makes up his mind to do a thing he don’t like to be cheated out of it. There have not been more than thirty new appointments made.” Thirty men suddenly deprived of their means of living, and thirty more lured perhaps from stable employments, in order to gratify the spite of a person whom it had been an affront to Russia to send thither as a representative of the United States! How foolish it is for us to complain of the alleged peculations of custom-house officials ! Has it ever been possible, in any age or country, to get decent and capable men to serve on these terms ; to be the puppets and instruments of such a person for a hundred and fifty dollars a month ? You can get thieves on such terms. You can get fools on such terms. You can get necessitous honest men for a short time on such terms. But Uncle Sam will never be well served so long as he can stand by with his hands in his pockets while his servants are thus treated.

“ You don’t do work enough to earn your salary,” said a chief of bureau, in this same custom-house, to one of the clerks. “ Work ! ” exclaimed the young man, “ I worked to get here ; you surely don’t expect me to work any longer.”

This anecdote, which sums up the system in a sentence, is one of the hundreds of good things collected by the indefatigable industry of Mr. Jenckes. He relates another story, to show the marvellous carelessness with which men are selected even for situations requiring special or professional knowledge. The chief clerk of the Office of Construction in the Treasury Department being requested to give the “full particulars ” of his examination, thus replied : “ Major Barker commenced the ‘examination’ by saying: ‘You are from New York, I believe, Mr. Clark ?’ I replied that I was. He then commenced a detailed narrative of his first visit to New York, and gave me an interesting and graphic account of the disturbance created in his mind by the ‘ noise and confusion ’ of the great city. The delivery of this narrative occupied, as nearly as I remember, about half an hour. I listened to it attentively, endeavoring to discover some point in his discourse which had reference to my (then present) ‘examination.’ I failed to discover any relevancy, and therefore made no reply. At the close of his narrative, without any further question, he said to his associate examiners: ‘Well, gentlemen, I presume there is no doubt but that Mr. Clark is qualified.’ Whereupon they all signed the certificate, and my ‘examination’ closed.”

Is it not one of the wonders of the world that the Treasury building stood long enough to get the roof upon it ? But the erection of an edifice ever so huge is an easy task compared with other tasks less conspicuous. A building is open to the inspection of all the world ; few men would apply for employment upon it who were wholly incompetent ; and it was easier to build it tolerably right than obviously wrong. But you cannot collect a whiskey-tax on rotation principles. I have quoted Thomas Benton’s maxim that power over a man’s livelihood is power over his will. Now, who has power over a tax-collector’s livelihood ? Mr. E. A. Rollins, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, answers this question for us in one of his reports. The whiskey-tax, he assures us, can never be collected until “the combined and active hostility of all those against whom the law is enforced shall be insufficient for the removal of any officer opposed to their plunderings.” He says further ; “The evil is inherent in the manner of appointments, and lies deeper than the present supremacy of any political party. . . . . Their tenure of office when secured is uncertain and feeble, seeming to be strengthened rather by concessions to wrong than by exacting the rights of the governments.” That tells the whole story. They naturally obey the power which gave and can take away their places. Uncle Sam, to use the language of the ring, “goes back” on those who carry his commission ; does not stand by his servants when they do their duty. He treats his servants vilely ; and, as a natural consequence, many of them are exceedingly remiss, or worse, in their duty. This error costs him, it is computed, in the collection of the revenue alone, a round hundred millions per annum in mere money, without reckoning the injury to the morals of the people, and the bad example set to other employers. “ I can’t get a man of talent,” said one of the architects employed by the government, “ to help me here ; because, first of all, the salary is too low ; secondly, no degree of merit in a man can get him an appointment ; and lastly, no degree of merit can keep a good man in a place if he should happen to get one.”

Let no one hug the delusion that the system is changed under President Grant. He cannot change it. I have no doubt he is as fully alive to its absurdities and its impolicy as any man living ; but, like Mr. Lincoln, he feels that he must run the machine as he finds it. He is, indeed, a victim of the system, which may yet cost him his life, as it cost the lives of two of his predecessors. His appointments show that he practically accepts the doctrine that to the victors belong the spoils, and that he is even exceptionally insensible to the peculiar claims which politicians occasionally respect. In fact, he is worried out of his life with the endless succession of importunate applicants. I used to wonder in Washington that he did not give it up, and fly to parts unknown, leaving us without any Uncle Sam. In all probability, too, he desires re-election. Every President desires it. It is human nature. The politicians would drop him in an instant, and set “party organs” at work creating odium against him, if he were to pause and make appointments on any other principle than the one which politicians recognize ; and when the nominating convention met, in 1872, his name would not be mentioned among the candidates.

Nothing will ever touch this evil short of restoring to the public service that element of permanence which it once had, and which all successful private establishments possess. In the lower grades of the persons employed in our great houses of business, there are frequent changes. Young men come and go, as they ought, trying themselves and the places they fill. Sometimes the person resigns the place and sometimes the place rejects the person; and it is seldom indeed that a man goes on for life as he begins. But in the higher grades there is, there should be, there must be, a degree of permanence. Twice a year, for fifteen years, I have gone to a certain bank to receive a dividend for a person who cannot conveniently go herself. Invariably I find the same paying-teller, well-appointed, self-possessed, counting out the money with that careful rapidity that never permits a mistake; the same excellent cashier, who learned his Latin Reader at my side at school no end of years ago ; the same serene and agreeable dividendclerk, and the same nice young man helping him. All goes like clock-work ; all is efficient, vigorous, and successful. The young men, as is just, work hard, get little, and are not yet certain of keeping their places ; but they know that if they finally choose to trust their future to that bank, there are places in it for the deserving which will give them a decent livelihood and all the security needful for peace and dignity. So it could be at the custom-house round the corner, if only two men in it were fixed in their places during good behavior; namely, the collector and the appraiser. Give just those two men a fair compensation, say thirty thousand dollars a year and no fees; put it out of the power of politicians to remove them ; give them the right to select their assistants; and hold them responsible for the faithful collection of the duties, − and we should soon have a custom-house that would afford as pleasing a scene of tranquil and efficient industry as the bank. The principle of permanence should be carried much farther; but even this little would lay the axe at the root of the evil, and give Uncle Sam better work and more revenue at two thirds of the present expense.

After a trial of forty years, rotation stands condemned as a wholly unmitigated evil, hurting everybody and blessing nobody, helping nothing that is good, and aggravating every evil. Uncle Sam will never be better served than he is until he learns to treat his servants with a liberality and consideration that seem at present far from his thoughts.