Show I Y THE PENSION OFFICE l I I How Green B llaum Looks Acts I and Talks THREE MILLION LETTERS YEAR Some Important Inside History of Grants Administration Told by cxroEtmastcr General Crusnell VASmxcTOX Feb ° G 1S90 Special Correspondence of TUB HCIIuuA short broadshouldered man with a big halfbald head and a long beard of black mixed with gray stood inside of black clothes and buttoned gaiters in tho commissioners com-missioners room at the pension ollieo yesterday yes-terday Every surrounding of the man was that of business A big desk at his back was littered with papers A stenographer stenog-rapher was rapidly transcribing notes in one corner of the room and in another corner cor-ner the click of the typowriter went merrily mer-rily on About the room seated on the red cushions of chairs backed against the wall wore a score of noted congressmen from every part of the union and talking to the little stout man with the big bald head was Senator John Ingalls who thin and talllooked like a great interrogation inter-rogation point as he stood with his hand at side holding a bundle of papers and enforced en-forced his argument with a shake of tho head The stout broad shouldered man in gaiters listened patiently and his eyes of hazel blue smiled from under his high forehead fore-head as he nodded assent to the Kansas Senators proposition A moment lateraud the Senator was gone and Springer of Illinois hud taken his place lie was disposed dis-posed of in the same easy manner and i noted that the refusals of I THE STOUT MAN IK OAITCUS were accepted quite as pleasantly as his promises of help This stout broad stioLJeroJ dark whiskered hazeleyed inau was General Green B Uautatho new emu isionei of pensions over whose signature sig-nature daring tho next year will be paid out marly one hundred million dollars The app HII auons asked of Congress to nay ins iusacns of 1SW 0 amount to SybOOOiltHJ Severe Senators and half a dozen llupre scnts nave i bills proposing an increase of t f inusion list and the probability is that 11010 Uian one hundred million dollars will bo given to our pltt soldiers I next year It is an immense amount uiiU the short fat lingers of General I Gen-eral Kauni will hold the pen that signs sway carry dollHr of it I thought of this as I iTusped his hand What a mighty I I I power to rest in one thumb and two linfftus a power sufficient if he could welii it for his own benefit to make him a Vaiiu < or a Gould enough to give 815 u every man woman and child in the Umited i States or 750 to every family Bets re 1 left I looked at the autograph which would make this immense amount good It is a plain business signature audIt aud-it reads without a title onnKi a RAUM 1I The signature is indicative of the man General Hauui 1S business from the word go lie was a practical baby sixty years ago and he is today one of the commonsense common-sense business statesmen of Washington City He had big business interests be i fore tie accepted this appointment and he brlirs f the same practical business ways into the office it takes 1000 men mad I uronento form his clerical force and ho leers every one of these up to the scratch 1 He works by example as well us by pro Opt Promptly at U 1 oclock ho is at the I office From a to 10 ho dictates answers an-swers to his private correspondence averaging about seventylive words n minute At 10 his doors are open and the crowd is let in lie has about three hundred hun-dred callers a day and he makes it a point to bee every one Many applicants have to be rcfuseu and there are now and then stormy times General Haunt makes it a I principle not to lose his temper about business busi-ness mutters and ho is as diplomatic as i possible He promises what ho can and refuses what he must and ho disposes of tho crowd very rapidly His calls continuo con-tinuo until 2 oclock Ho then takes a luucli it ho has not had it before be-fore This ho has in his office It consists of a piece of beefsteak beef-steak and a biscuit with a glass or two of milk He is very careful ol his health and he watches his diet After 2 pm he receives re-ceives the chiefs of his department considers con-siders KXOTTT rsxsiox CASES nnd remains at work until oclock when be drops his papers and poos homo General Raum lives hero in Washington on Rhode Island avcaue near Iowa circle He has a louse worth at least I twentylive thousand dollars and this is very comfortably furnished fur-nished A part of tho fnrniture was bought recently and his sideboard which I rome from Grand Rapids Mich took a J a s number of prizes at state fairs before ho purchased it I The business of too pension office can hardly bo appreciated The Isles ot its Ictses would carpet a state if the pipers were spread out The old documents I anxmg its recor js would make u strip is wide tis a wagon road and long enough tore to-re < 1ci around the world It has settled I millions of cl Urns and there arc now more than four Hundred thousand eases in thu o3ice Avaitiuj suttlcment Geueril Kiuui believes that the cases should bo made complete by the claimants and that such cases should be tlrst passed upon by Mini He has given directions that nil claims in which the evidence is complete shall be first acted upon und at the present rate of I progress if the liwjrers and claimants I l have all these lour hundred thousandeases ready for action today ho thinks that In seven or eight months his bureau would TVKO UVKX WITIl Till voiii and everything would be finished up to thatditte His mail is immense The pension commissioner I com-missioner gets fully 000 < MU letters ycar md 2003KK of these quire prompt answers an-swers Think of a000OUO lettersl Each one will contain at least a foot of notepaper note-paper and if you would paste the shouts together I to-gether the mail received liy this jnm in a single year would make a ribbon six inches wide longer than from Now York to Uluve limd lNlitnatni each letter at costing a 1cent slump it makes P liIO > K1U for postage and wbcn you lleurc up the labor and I brains the worry and trouble you harts I embodied a number of lifetimes in this I I I item Ten thousand letters a day Seventy thousand letters a week More than i 3000000 > letters a year This is I what the pension office mail amounts to The most of the letters I in however managed by clerks mil the pcisiuii olce postolllce and distributing room isms bias bi-as that of many Illage post lec Nearly every letter idiiires iccarch anil many of them consume several net of notepaper note-paper Nevertheless about thousand are answered every day The letters received from ConKiXSsmna amount to about one thousand achy < 1 and CouvrusiHuiiirs letters must always bo answered More than two thousand pension cases iro settled every week and during the Just six days 115 l invalids have received pensions and MS 1 pensions have been granted to wiiluus Oli mcn have boon granted ri inuiiav ut pension pen-sion and l7sS now claims have been admitted ad-mitted At present there are XEAIUY ltIr A J1III10X CLAIMS pending in the pension olUceaad the department depart-ment is payijj out more than a million and a half of dollars in pensions every week It is i the iilcKOst business of the knj iu the world and it grows bigger every year Lut mo tell you soinoiliinij about the building in which this immense business is transacted It is i the bigfresl brie iiulld ingin the world and its mighty lOof covers two acres of ground It is i mimetic of red pressed brick mighty thieestori structure struc-ture with a groat chiis roof rising tier fay tier over it The biggest brick structUre of the past was the baths of Diocletian the ruins ot which stand by the Via Kaionnle I in Riimo These baths wens a amine in cir cuuifiranco their interior was Ilnislied in marble and Egyptian granite amid they ImO 3000 marble seats for bathers Wonderful mosaics covered its Hours hot and cohl water continuously flowed for the use of the bather and the dirtiest of plebeians could have access to them for one eighth of a cent a time It may bo that General Meigs had this immense structure in his mind when 110 modelled this pension building It is made after the Houiin palaces of the liftecnth century and it consists of a series of big rooms around a great central cOUrt covering cover-ing an acre This court is i much like the court of St Marks iu Venice save that St Marks has only the Italian sky to roof while the pension court is protected from hn cold winds by a sky of glass ami its immense glass roof is upheld by eighty mighty brick columns higher than any city house outside a Hat and thicker than any I tree in America outside of California Each of these columns contains enough brick to build two good sized houses and I in the ages of the future they may stand I here like obelisks when tho rest of thc building has crumbled into ruins i AUOUXD Tills GREAT Count I I are arcades arising gallery above gallery and opening out from the threo stories of rooms Some of the columns of these are l gilded or urocscd The finish of the court the columns and the walls is in white tho great diamond glass roof is set in framed I mosaic ot yellow and the great acre of floor is of colored tiitis In the centre of the I whole great mountain sends up a silvery spray and the whole is one of the curiosities curiosi-ties of architecture It was in this building build-ing that the last two inaugural balls nave been held and it is hero that all the great balls of tho future Presidents will be celebrated cele-brated At present the floor is filled with great cases of tiles and you may walk for I u mile in and out through the aisles surrounded sur-rounded by these great cases of pension papers In these old papers may bo found tho names of the most noted men of our history his-tory Blames great gniudmother got m pension and Presidents Grant and lincoln I received land for their services in tile Mexican and the Back Hawk wars Ro ert E Lee got 100 acres of land for tile work he did as a colonel 0jr war Avith Mexico and Jefferson Davis eecived the same amount for his services Tho sinxiCAK w Alt PEKSIOXS are fast dying out and there are at present r1 r but few revolutionary widows on the pension i pen-sion rolls About five years ago there were eighty Tho number is now reduced to twentynine and three of these are ninety seven years of ago They are Anna Maria Vojng of Pennsylvania Pennsylva-nia Nancy Rains of Vermont and Susan Curtis of Maine They must have been married to their husbands long after the revolutionary war for they wore I only seven years old at the beginning of this century and the war closed seventeen years before that The youngest revolutionary revolu-tionary widow is Nancy Green an Indiana woman of seventy one She was born in 1S10 and her husband must have been prayhaired when she married him Mrs Grant and Mrs Garticld are the only Pre sidents1 wives who now receive pensions They get 5OJO > a year by a special act of Congress Mrs President i Lincoln got SiOOO a year from IhTi to KSSi I The amount was then increased to50iO and this it coil il tinued until her death The daughter of President Zach Taylor gets K j O a month and she receives this for General Taylors services in tho I Mexican war Among tho noted widows of generals of the late war who receive pensions are thoso of E D Baker Whip ile Sumner Robert Anderson the hero of fort Sumpter of George H Ouster tho Indian 1 lighter of Daniel McCook and I I l < Y iuk P Blair Mrs John A Logan gets IOa week by a special act Congress and I I tints widow of Admiral Furragut receives J0X a year in the same way Phil ICeir neys widow did get 50 a month but 1 am told she has married again and the sum now goes to the children Mrs General Hancock Han-cock gets a pension and there are a number num-ber of other soldiers widows who have been pensioned by a special act of Congress 1 chatted lust night with Senator Blair of New Hampshire about tho itcvisiox OF TUB IsnsiitTCitiAN cnuucit ° cnncu by which the more advanced thinkers take the worst elements of hell out of their religion re-ligion maid Blair told mo the story of his wonderful fright with brimstone damnation damna-tion He is the offspring of Puritan parents par-ents ad his boyhood was passed m an old farm house inNew Hampshire in the garret gar-ret of which there was a library of theological theo-logical woiks advocating foreordained hell for the noncloct This light reading loaned Souator Blairs nest intellectual pabulum Sad hoI ho-I lead at those locks before that open Jim and I retwmber that when I was about moo years old I sot it into my head that I hud committed till uuvardonablo sin This unpardonable sin was you know one of the cardinal points of tho old theology The books did not state whet this sin was and the preachers tiiil not seem to know but it vas as certain as death that ho who committed com-mitted it could have no forgiveness and that he was foreordained to the hottest Tires of the lower regions fur ai eternity of ages Well I thought 1 had committed it 1 thought I i WAS BOUND TO rc imixcn and for weeks T lost sleep at night and worried and fretted all the day over my condition I think I should have gone 1 crazy if i had 1 not gotten relief and my relief re-lief came from an old volume on tho unpardonable un-pardonable sin These consisted of sermons ser-mons by a learned divine und in them it i was suited that the fact that u person 1 thuught he hail committed the unpardcn I alfle sin was an evidence that he had not 1 I committed it for if he had committed it being damned already the fires of rcpen I tcace couid not touch his heart and he I would go on blindly to his destruction This relieved me greatly and after a time my dread of the sin passed away and I regained re-gained my usual health I shall never forget for-get the terror though that I felt and I am glad to say that religion grows more liberal lib-eral as the world grows older metcxPostmastcr General Creswcllin the National Metropolitan bank in Washington Wash-ington yesterday He is one of tho finest looking men in the capital city Tall broadshouldered and white whiskered his clear blue eyes look out from under abroad a-broad high forehead and his tread is as lirm and his step as active as it was when he was a member of the United States Senate Sen-ate in 1S33 The last time I saw him was at Mount McGregor where he had gone to attend at-tend Grants funeral He was AN INTIMATE TllIEX OF GRANT and ho was one of the generals most ardent ar-dent admirers After a few moments our conversation turned upon Grant and he saidGrant Grant was the greatest general I havo over known and of all the grcat mon of my acquaintance I consider him the greatest He was great as a statesman when you judge him by the soldierstatesman standard stan-dard and some of his acts and sayings as president are quoted today He was n great writer and there arc few works that will compare in simplicity and beauty with his memoirs His state papers were equally well written and ho wrote all his messages with his own hand excepting those parts which he got from his cabinet oClccrs In preparing the paragraphs relating re-lating to the post ofllto and the other departments de-partments ho would give directions to his cabinet to condense their reports and would insert such condensation in his messages Did he advise much with his cabinet I asked Yes He had his own oplnionailil i i own policy but ho advised with his cab jncEonnU matters crclftting10 theHaribuf Hbparfmratsmerlvhich thcywcro placed I was at tho head of tho postofllco department depart-ment and I found him always KEADV TO cnAxan ins JEWS whenever sufficient reasons could be civen a him for a change He was quick to tike advantage of the moment and he dcciiioil upon matters usually as they came befor him Speaking of his icadmeas in writing his inessaires iml hIs quickness of deem ion a remarkable instance occurred at the time of the opening of tho FrancoPrussian war It was the last nislit of the congressional con-gressional session and President Grant I with his cabinet tram at the Capitol signing i I sign-ing bills when the news came Now the great German steamship line feared that its ships would be captured by tho French and that it would not be able to carry on its voyages < from Germany Ger-many to America Its owners made a proposition to change the line to an American Amer-ican line to have it carry tho American flag and to take our mills from America to the continent Under the American Hug it would bo safe from seizure by France and it would give us one of the greatest steamship steam-ship lines of tho world This offer from the line came to President Grant at the Capitol The subject was proposed to his cabinet and turning to me ho asked what I thought of the proposition from a postal standpoint I told him and he asked mete put my views Jn writing IIe then turned to Hamilton Fish and asked him to write out his views on the subject from a diplomatic = J diplo-matic standpoint We both did so aud wo both favored the taking of timeline time-line General Grant took the two statements state-ments and rapidly wrote an introduction and a conclusion to them He then sent I this into the Senate as a message In it ho advised the taking of the line and had Congress acted upon his advice the American I Ameri-can flag today would float over some of the liaestships of tho world and the interests i I inter-ests of American trade would have been furthered by this I 1I Do you still think General that the United States would have been benelitted I by the reelection of President Grant 1 I i I do General Grant was a man of steady growth Ho was a careful observer and the effect of his foreign tour and his intercourse with the great statesmen of the world and his knowledge gained from his observation of the governments of other countries would have made him an invaluable President Had he been nominated nom-inated ho WOULD seminar HAVE HECX ELECTED and ho would have done more to bring tho south amid the north together thaa any UltJ 11 I other man possibly could have done This was his great desire in his thinking of a possible reelection I I hero referred to time Chicago convention conven-tion which nominated Gartield und to ihe I wonderful perseverance of the noted 205 of whom PostmasterGeneral Creswell was one Referring to the speech Conkling made on this occasion said Postmaster General Crcswcll Roscoe Conkling was a great man out he lacked the adaptability of a politician That speech at Chicago was a great one hut it had lines in it here and tlTere that offended the Sherman and Biaine men where it should have conciliated concili-ated them It was however Couklinir and Conkling was not a diplomat I believe that he might have been President had it not been for his proud nature which would not permit him to bend Ho hail the chance in Cincinnati when Hayes was nominated but he did nut talce it Referring to his Chicago speech you remember remem-ber the opening After that great assembly as-sembly had become quiet in clear tones ho recited that verse of poetry which took the convention by storm aim following which there was an applause lasting for nearly a quarter of an hour He said You aslc l me whence my candidate The answer it shall I He lenses from Appomator And its famous applolrce How they did cheer and how the Sherman Sher-man men and the Blalnc men hissed The words went around the country by tele graph and created a responsive thrill IK EVEKY GRANTLOVING 1IEAUT It was one of the great introductions to great historic speeches and I have never seen its original published Conkling trot this verso from Tom Murphy some months before the convention lie and Murphy Mur-phy were out riding and Murphy told him he would like to read him over a poem or two which he had written This verse was in one of the poems and Coulding as he heard it said it was a good thing anil stored it away in his brain for future use Like all great speakers he was continually studying for the future and I doubt whether he over prepared a better sentence sen-tence in advance for an extempore speech than this FUANI G CA PINTIU |