burglarizing a store and failed to appreciate the character of his
prisoner. It was between two and three o'clock in the morning when the
capture was made, and as the lockup was located about a mile from the
scene of the crime, the officer decided to keep the rogue in his room
until morning. Carefully locking the room door and handcuffing John, he
lit his pipe and made himself as comfortable as possible—so comfortable,
in fact, that he was soon fast asleep. When he awoke his bird had flown,
and the officer's watch and purse were missing.
XVII
POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT
EVERY man and woman in the republic has a personal interest in this
department of the government. You pay two cents for a stamp, throw a
missive into a box, and start the machinery which requires 100,000
persons to run it. If your letter is for the Philippines, you use the
railroad and the ocean steamer, with many relays of men and engines to
perform your bidding. If your letter is for Alaska, you use the
railroad, the steamship, and the reindeer team to deliver it. Not an
hour, day or night, the entire year through, but men are toiling to
hurry your mail to its destination. If your letter is for one of the
large cities, skilful men board the train, and as it approaches its
destination distribute the mail for each district, so that your letter
will not lie for hours in the central office. If your letter is to a
busy farmer who may be in the midst of his harvest and has no time to go
for his mail, one of the government's faithful servants takes that
letter to him. Yet we are much more likely, withal, to growl at Uncle
Sam than to remember the faithful service we receive for so little
money.
The Post-office Department is one which is not yet self-supporting. The
last annual report of the Postmaster-General shows that the receipts
from ordinary postal revenue amounted to $191,478,663.41. Figures are
not at hand for a further revenue to the department from money-order
business, including post-office orders which were uncalled for. The
government expended $16,910,278.99 more than it received. This deficit
is occasioned by the second-class matter, which includes newspapers and
magazines paying less than cost of transportation. It is also due partly
to the glaring abuse of the franking privilege by members of the Senate
and House. If a description of what some of these men commit to Uncle
Sam to carry for them free of charge were published they would hide
their heads in shame. While this abuse continues we are not likely to
get a one-cent rate on letters, a rate which would greatly benefit the
entire country. Poor people are paying the postage for these
Congressmen.
The United States Post-office Department and the post-office for the
City of Washington are in a building on Pennsylvania Avenue, which
extends over an entire square from Twelfth to Thirteenth Streets, N. W.
The Postmaster-General is a member of the President's Cabinet. He
receives $12,000 per annum for giving to his country services which a
railroad or great newspaper would consider cheap at $25,000 per annum.
There are four Assistant Postmaster-Generals who receive each about half
as much as their chief. These are appointed by the President and
confirmed by the Senate.
The Postmaster-General makes postal treaties with foreign governments,
by and with the advice of the President, awards contracts, and directs
the management of the domestic and foreign mails.
The First Assistant Postmaster-General has charge of the salary and
allowance division, free delivery system, post-office supplies,
money-order division, dead-letter office, and the general
correspondence.
The Second Assistant Postmaster-General has charge of the contract
division, division of inspection, railway adjustment (which includes
weighing and deciding on what pay shall be given railroads), the mail
equipment division, and foreign mails.
The Third Assistant Postmaster-General has charge of postage stamps and
postmasters' accounts, registry office, and the special delivery system.
The Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General has the appointment of many
postmasters and of post-office inspectors, and has charge of the bonds
and commissions for postmasters. This last place was formerly filled by
Mr. J. L. Bristow, of Kansas. During the first year of Mr. Roosevelt's
Presidency Mr. Bristow officially decapitated as many as fifty
postmasters a day, and it is claimed it was a slow year in the business.
Of course, for every one who lost his place some other fellow was made
happy. Mr. P. V. De Graw now has the office.
No impure books, pamphlets, or papers are allowed transportation by the
United States mail. Men in this employ have a right to insist that their
work shall not include indecent matter. As far as possible the
government tries to prevent advertisers of dishonest businesses from
using the mails for fraudulent gain. It is to be hoped that the time may
soon come when all financial schemers who now defraud the wage-earning
class by circulars on mining, oil, or industrial stock, or other
doubtful enterprises, shall be obliged to prove to the government
officials that the scheme represented is just what the circular sets
forth. All Building Associations and Insurance Companies should pass
under the same law. Good people would be glad of this inspection, and
bad people make it necessary.
The Postmaster-General recommends that the government have inspectors
appointed who shall see that neither telegraph nor express companies be
permitted to carry matter for lotteries or any known fraudulent
enterprise. The McKinley and Roosevelt administrations will be noted for
the improvement and extension of the rural delivery system.
The dead-letter office is one of great interest, and is found in the
general post-office building. Of unclaimed letters there were last year
nearly six million; of misdirected letters, 454,000; and of letters
without any address, 39,837. Any letter which is unclaimed at a
post-office after a few weeks is sent to the dead-letter office. Here it
is opened, and if it contains the name and address of the writer, the
letter is returned; but letters signed "Your loving Amy," "Your devoted
mother," "Your repentant son," fail to reach the eyes and hearts of
those who wait for them in vain. Last year 526,345 unclaimed letters
written in foreign countries, probably to loved ones in the United
States, were sent to the dead-letter office. Think of the heartaches
which that means! Think of the loves and friendships wrecked thereby!
Letters whose envelopes display the business card of the writer are
returned to the sender by the local postmaster after a certain period.
Papers, magazines, and books with insufficient postage are sent to the
dead-letter office, held for a short time, and then distributed to
hospitals, asylums, and penal institutions.
Wherever "Old Glory" floats, there the servants of Uncle Sam carry his
mail. Of this department every citizen should be proud, for its speed
and efficiency is equaled by no other mail service in the world.
XVIII
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
ABOUT fifty years ago, at the request of Hon. H. E. Ellsworth, the sum
of one thousand dollars was set apart in the interest of agriculture;
now there is a Department of Agriculture, and its Secretary is a member
of the President's Cabinet.
The present Secretary of this department is Hon. James Wilson, of Iowa.
He served several terms in Congress, was Regent of the State University
of Iowa, and for six years prior to his present appointment was Director
of the Iowa Experimental Station and professor of agriculture at the
Iowa Agricultural College, Ames, Iowa.
The Department of Agriculture consists of twenty different divisions,
each one of which is worthy of a complete chapter. The department has
many buildings, but the main one stands within the grounds of the
Smithsonian Institution, in a bower of blooming plants and clinging
vines. Every kind of plant from the tropics to the Arctic Circle which
can be made to grow in this climate can be found in this department.
Studies in ornamentation, best methods of grafting, pruning, budding,
hybridizing, and treating diseases of plants, trees, and animals are
thoroughly investigated at its experimental stations.
Vegetable and flower seeds, grass seeds, plants, trees, bulbs, and
grape-vines are distributed in the department through the Senators,
members, and delegates of Congress. By this means the best varieties of
the vegetable kingdom are carried throughout the United States. During
the coming year the country will be more carefully districted, and only
such seeds and plants as have been thoroughly acclimated will be sent to
the several districts.
Members of Congress from cities exchange their quota of vegetable and
crop seeds for flower seeds, thus leaving more of the former for members
with a farming constituency.
The following statement shows the amounts of seeds, bulbs, plants, and
trees, so far as the allotments have been made, for a recent fiscal
year:
Each Senator, member, and delegate will receive—
_Vegetable Seed_ 12,000 packages, 5 papers each.
_Novelties Vegetable Seed_ 500 packages, 5 papers each.
_Flower Seed_ 500 packages, 5 papers each.
_Tobacco Seed_ 110 packages, 5 papers each to
districts growing tobacco.
_Cotton Seed_ 70 packages, 1 peck each, to
districts growing cotton.
_Lawn Grass Seed_ 30 packages.
_Forage Crop Seed_ Allotment not yet made.
_Sorghum Seed_ Allotment not yet made.
_Sugar Beet Seed_ Allotment not yet made.
_Bulbs_ 10 boxes, 35 bulbs each; or 20
boxes, 17 bulbs each.
_Grape-vines_ 8 packages, 5 vines each.
_Strawberry Plants_ 10 packages, 15 plants each.
_Trees_ 20 packages, 5 trees each.
For seed distributed alone the government appropriates $270,000. Think
of the beneficence of that! The rarest and best seeds that money can buy
will be planted in every State and Territory of this country. Experts
are continually sent abroad to find new cereals, fruits trees, animals,
and flowers.
The department has at least one correspondent in every county of the
United States through whom the statistics on acreage, quality of crops,
and success of experiments are reported at stated times.
All questions pertaining to farming are answered by this department. If
a man desires to buy a farm in Kansas or Alaska, a portion of the
country of which he knows little, the department will tell him of the
climate, the crops likely to be remunerative, and the obstacles of soil
or climate to overcome. A chemist will analyze the soil for him, tell
him what it contains, and what it needs to produce certain crops. An
entomologist will tell him the insects prevalent which may destroy his
crops. The scientist will also tell him how to destroy the inserts, what
birds to encourage and what to banish.
At Summerville, S. C., the government has a tea farm with a fully
equipped factory, and the tea produced is claimed by experts to equal
the best imported article. This year one thousand acres of rice land
near Charleston, S. C., will be put in tea. The cost of producing
American tea is about fifteen cents a pound; the yield is four hundred
pounds to the acre, the wholesale selling price forty to fifty cents per
pound, and the retail price seventy-five cents to one dollar per pound.
In the wheat-growing States the government is trying a fine variety of
macaroni wheat, in order to compete successfully with the imported
article, of which $8,000,000 worth enters this country annually.
In the cotton States the government is trying Egyptian cotton, which is
now imported to the value of $8,000,000 annually.
In Arizona and other dry tracts dates and other Egyptian fruits are
being successfully acclimated. In the hot states rubber, coffee,
bananas, and cocoa are being tried.
Our fruit markets are being extended into Europe, and special agents and
consuls are using every influence to enlarge this market. At the Paris
Exposition our pears, apples, peaches, and plums were a never-ending
surprise to people of all lands. Californians made us all proud of them
by their lavish generosity, and the result has been that pears and
apples have been sent in large quantities to Southern Europe, also to
Russia and Siberia.
New cottons are being sent throughout the South, new prunes and plums
along the Pacific Coast. Important experiments are being made in sugar
producing. Pineapples are being acclimated in Florida, plants which
produce bay rum and various perfumes are being introduced in several
states, and olives from Italy are being tried in Porto Rico and the
Philippines.
In many different States soils have been examined. In Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, it was found certain soils contain ingredients to produce
the finest Cuban tobacco, and other soil regarded as useless was shown
to be capable of producing certain rare plants. Every state should call
for this kind of analytic help, until we make the United States the
garden of the world.
XIX
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY ON PURE FOODS
DIETETICS
THIS subject of the relative value of foods is one that interests every
individual. The Department of Agriculture is making a brave effort to
secure a law regulating interstate and international commerce, requiring
that all foods sent from one state to another, or to foreign countries,
shall be labeled for just what they are, and shall conform to the
government standard in excellence.
For instance, renovated or "process" butter is now passing its ordeal.
"Process" butter means that a large quantity of butter has been sent to
a factory or elsewhere, and there worked together and colored to secure
uniformity of appearance, and then placed on the market. The government
requires that it shall be properly labeled. It is of less nutritive
value than either oleomargarine or butterine. A government leaflet gives
householders and merchants full directions for discovering the real
value of anything called butter. Every farmer should secure a copy of
the Agricultural Year-book.
I remember once, a number of years ago, at a table in London, discussing
with some merchants from South America the subject of buying their goods
in the United States instead of England.
One man from British Guiana said: "It is impossible to deal with the
United States; they have no food-test laws, and we buy one thing and get
another. Then take machinery and implements. The first three or four
purchases will be all right, after which they put off on us shelf-worn
goods which they could not sell at home."
When the government can put an official stamp on each article exported
it will be good for the permanence of our export trade.
No such general law now exists, and the best our government can do is to
certify that the goods comply with the standard of the country to which
they are to be sent. It is believed that many of the preservatives used
with food products are harmless to the human body, and a scientific test
of this was conducted in December, 1902. The Agricultural Department
called upon the young scientists of the colleges and universities to
assist in settling this question. A picked body of students were
supplied with the purest food to bring them to perfect condition, and
soups, meats, vegetables, jellies, etc., containing preservatives
claimed to be harmless will be given them, and as soon as a touch of
dyspepsia is manifest the test will be dropped. It was doubtful whether
football and baseball managers, not to mention such insignificant
factors as professors and mothers, would consent that their favorites
should be submitted to such experiments. But scientists are earnest
seekers for truth, and enough subjects were readily found to make the
trial.
It is not so much the making of impure foods that is objected to as it
is an effort to provide that goods shall be labeled for what they are—
that is, a can labeled raspberry jam shall not consist of gelatine with
a few raspberry seeds and juice used for coloring, but shall be the real
thing.
In recent testimony before Congress a case of this kind was brought out.
A certain firm made jelly from the refuse of apples—that is, rotten and
wilted apples, peelings and cores, stuff which when made cost the firm
one and a half cents a pound—and this they sold as apple and currant
jelly, selling hundreds of buckets. The government forced the firm to
label the buckets correctly, and the sale became insignificant. Now, the
poor need cheap foods, but it is not fair that they should have to pay
more than a thing is worth; besides, such frauds interfere with the
industry of the farmer's wife who sells pure jelly.
The government now sends agents into every city, who buy from the
shelves of grocers just what they offer for sale. The grocer, of course,
does not recognize the government agent. The stuff is then sent to the
laboratory, and the grocer and manufacturer notified as to results. The
latter is told that his formula will be published, and before that is
done he will be permitted to offer any statement that he may think
advisable.
We are apt to think the "embalmed" meat agitation during the Spanish war
will injure the trade of the country more than the war itself, but that
agitation was right if it saved the health of even one soldier, and,
above all, if it secures society in the future against deleterious
canned meats.
It is well known, tho not approved by the government, that there are
several canneries in the West where horse-flesh only is used. The
government watches them closely and forces them to label the goods for
just what they are. These goods are sent to such foreign countries as do
not object to the use of horse-flesh.
Most States have stringent food laws, but so much food is sent from the
State in which it is produced to another that State laws become
inoperative.
The government finds glucose (not in itself harmful) to be the basis of
many frauds. Colored and flavored it is sold as honey, and it is the
foundation of very many jams. Cocoas and chocolates are made from wheat,
corn, rice, potatoes; pepper, cinnamon, allspice, nutmegs, and mustards
are made from almost every cereal. Pure vinegar is rare. Almost any kind
of wine can be drawn from the same spigot, colored and flavored to suit
the requirements of the wine desired.
Sometimes in foreign lands I have thought that London particularly needs
a commission on pure coffee. I think I shall know the taste of chicory
as long as I live from experiences in that city.
Most foreign countries make stringent food laws chiefly on liquors and
butter. Germany draws close lines on meat, including all forms of
sausage, with some restrictions on butter, wine, coloring on toys, and
coloring matter generally.
Every European country has stringent laws on the composition of beer. I
wonder how long American beer which rots the shoes of the bartender, and
brings paralysis to his right hand, would be tolerated in Germany or
Britain? At the Buffalo Exposition, in the government display, was one
sample of "peach brandy," the formula of which was forty gallons of
proof spirits, one-half pound of an essence, one quart of sugar syrup,
and a sufficient amount of coloring matter. The "bead oil" on the same
shelf, it was claimed, was a solution of soap intended to produce a
"bead" on liquors, and thereby give the appearance of age.
Could anything better prove the need of a government standard than the
above, or the further facts that one man is now in the penitentiary for
fraudulent use of the United States mail in advertising ground soapstone
as a flour adulterant, and that fifteen cheaper oils are now used to
adulterate pure olive oil?
If I were a young college woman I would go in for chemistry, and make
myself a food specialist for grocers, exporters, and importers. I would
make my home in some large institution where the food question as to
what nutriments the body needs, and what will produce best results at
the least cost, could be tested scientifically. I would take the cook
and her helpers into a loving partnership to improve the dietetics of
the establishment, and yet reduce expenses. There is a new business now
ready for earnest college women.
XX
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
THE Department of the Interior was created by act of Congress in 1849.
When the names of its subdivisions are enumerated, it will readily be
seen that no adequate description of it can be given in one or two
chapters.
It comprises the Patent Office, the Pension Office, General Land Office,
Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Education, Commissioner of
Railroads, and the Office of the Geological Survey. Each office is
managed by a commissioner or director, who has under him a large force
of officials and clerks.
In the chief building of the Department of the Interior, fronting on F
Street, and extending from Seventh to Ninth, and from F to G Streets,
may be found the Patent Office of the United States. No other department
so well reveals the inventive genius of the most inventive people on
earth.
Once at a table in Paris a Frenchman said to me: "The Americans are
inventors because they are lazy."
"Well," I said, "I have heard many surprising charges against my
countrymen, but that excels all. How do you make that out?"
"Well, I am a manufacturer. I set an American boy to keep a door open;
before half an hour he has invented a machine which will open and shut
it, and I find my boy playing marbles."
[Illustration:
Photo by Clinedinst
THE PATENT OFFICE
]
"Sensible boy! Yes, with that view of it, maybe we are; we certainly do
not care to do by hand that which a machine can better perform."
The Patent Office is one of the few departments which is more than
self-supporting. In the year 1836 but one patent was taken out; during
the year ending December 31, 1901, the total number of applications was
46,449. The total receipts for the year were $6,626,856.71; total
expenditures, $1,297,385.64—leaving a balance far over five million
dollars in favor of the government.
There are divisions for different classes of inventions. When a patent
is applied for, examiners make all necessary investigations, and
carefully look into the invention claimed to be new, comparing it, part
by part, with patents already existing before determining whether a
patent can be granted. They have a library with plates and descriptions
of about everything under the sun. From this library inventors can have
books and plates sent them in order to compare their work with
inventions now existing.
The Secretary of the Interior is a member of the President's Cabinet,
and receives $12,000 per year. He has charge of the Capitol (through the
architect), the Insane Asylum, and the College for Mutes—indeed, it
would seem that his work is sufficient for ten Secretaries.
There is an Assistant Secretary of the Interior, who receives $4,000 per
annum, and commissioners of different divisions and bureaus who receive
from $3,000 to $6,000 annually.
Many officers of this department could command higher salaries in the
commercial world, but these positions secure honor and respect not only
for the man himself but also for his descendants, hence these
commissionerships are very desirable. For that reason men give up a
legal practise or a railroad position, bringing salaries eight or ten
times as large.
The present Secretary, Ethan Allen Hitchcock,[4] of Missouri,
great-grandson of Ethan Allen, of Vermont, has a wide experience in
manufacturing, railroad, and mining interests, and has served as
Ambassador to Russia. He was called to his present place in 1898.
Footnote 4:
Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Secretary of the Interior under Presidents
McKinley and Roosevelt, died April 9, 1909, age seventy-four.
The Secretary in his report for 1901 entreats that at least twenty more
persons of fine mechanical ability be appointed as examiners, as his
force is much behind in their work, altho many labor far over allotted
time.
The Bureau of Education, established in 1867, is probably as little
known to the general public as any branch of the government. It is a
clearing-house.