Show 7 1 c LOOK OVER WASTE PECULIAR DUTIES OF WASHINGTON WASHING-TON TREASURY EMPLOYES An Discarded Paper Gathered up and Subjected to Systematic Search Large Sums of Money Have Thus Been Saved Any one who enters the treasury department de-partment ut the extreme northern door on Fifteenth street can when ho gets at the foot of the short light of granite steps and glances Into the first room on the left observe the manipulation of the waste paper gathered up each day In the treasurers office and carried car-ried from below to undergo examlna lion before It Is sold to bo remade Into Post new paper says the Washington The presiding genius of this particular particu-lar wastepaper room as It Is called la Mis Mary Warren n pleasant faced and courteous woman who has been lingering waste paper for at least a third of a century She has the assistance as-sistance of two other women and the work Is by no means light Our llngerssometlmcs get very sore said Mrs Warren and wo have to use glycerine very often when the days work Is ended to keep our hands soft and our digits limber Sometimes papers of much value and money of large amounts are found In the discarded envelopes that find their way Into the wastepaper room Mrs Warren herself received a promotion promo-tion some years ago for discovering and promptly turning In a heavy amount of money that had been heedlessly heed-lessly left In Its Inclosure Checks have frequently been found among the waste papers envelopes and boxes that are dumped Into the large wicker baskets preparatory to examination exam-ination by the trio of diligent searchers search-ers In their humble little1 room In tho treasury basement Sometime on a pay day a clerk when he gets his little envelope In It hurry to get out and blow In some of his cash falls to extract tho full amount He tears open his envelope thinks he has got all of his salary when ho las not The sweepers find the envelope on tho floor chuck It Into the waste basket and down It goes with an abundance of other litter to Mrs Warren She or one of her painstaking pains-taking assistants finds It and the man who lost It gets It back and Is so happy hap-py that he feels like writing a sonnet In honor of tho finder We dont find as many checks or greenbacks now as was tho case some years ago When we do It can easily bo traced to carelessness on the part of some one said tho chief of the room In every case It Is an accident acci-dent but such accidents can hardly bo overlooked more than once and tho careless employo who Is responsible is duly cautioned Tho fact that such mishaps are so Infrequent now does not in the least lessen our responsibility responsibil-ity We folks down here handle every piece of paper conscientiously and it any sort of valuable matter comes here in the waste It wont escape coming com-ing to light under our scrutiny It strikes me as something of a misnomer to call all this stuff waste Mrs Warren continued Nothing goes to waste The sale of the paper brings cash into tho treasury Even the sealing wax that Is melted upon the strings about big envelopes is utili iced I I believe It is reused in the preparation of cement Tho thick paper pa-per boxes are all examined and go out Into the world again to perform some new service In addition to the waste room which Is under the supervision of tho treasurer there are two others In the department They are under the eagle eye of Superintendent Uhodes The duties are similar to thosn nat < rw furred to but If any of them is more Important than tho other It must bo that of the treasurers office for there It Is located In close proximity to tho I counting room tho cash loom and tho great vaults with their silver and gold and greenbacks and bonds and mil lions of tho nations wealth |