CHAPTER XXXVIII.THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR—UNCLE SAM’SDOMESTIC ARRANGEMENTS.
Inadequate Accommodation in Heaven—Defects of our Great Public Buildings—The Public Archives—Valuable Documents in Jeopardy—Talk of Moving the Capital—A Dissension of a Hundred Years—Concerning Certain Idiots—A Day in the Patent Office—The Inventive Genius of the Country—Aggressions of the Home Department—A Comprehensive Act of Congress—Seven Divisions of the Department of the Interior—The Disbursing Division—Division of Indian Affairs—Lands and Railroads—Pensions and Patents—Public Documents—Division of Appointments—The Superintendent of the Building—The Secretary of the Interior and his Subordinates—Pensions and their Recipients—Indian Affairs—How the Savages are Treated—Over Twenty-one Million of Dollars Credited to their Little Account—The Census Bureau—A Rather Big Work—The Bureau of Patents—What is a Patent?—A Self-supporting Institution—A Few Dollars Over—The Use Made of a Certain Brick Building—Secretary Delano—An Objection Against Him—How Wickedly he Acted to the Women Clerks—“The Accustomed Tyranny of Men”—Cutting Down the Ladies’ Salaries—Making Places for Useful Voters—A Sweet Prayer for Delano’s Welfare—Something about Delano’s Face.
It has always been a mystery to me how Heaven could continue large enough for all the people who are trying to get into it, that is, if the human race is to keep on being born.
I am equally puzzled about the internal spaces of our great public buildings. When designed, they were supposed to be ample for centuries to come; but with the constant creation of new bureaus, and even of departments,with the fast and never-ceasing accumulations of records in every branch of the Government service, not a public building in Washington is now large enough to hold the archives, or even theemployésbelonging to its own department. Already the city is filled with temporary buildings, in which the overflow of the various departments have taken refuge. Even now, every public building needs a duplicate as large as itself to hold its treasures, and to carry on fitly the intricate machinery of its routine service. The constant cry of “Capital moving” has not only prevented this, but has caused the precious records of the departments to be packed into precarious and insufficient store-houses.
The public archives should all be stored in fire-proof buildings. The destruction of the titles to all the lands in the country sold by the Government would involve a loss greater than the cost of all Washington city. And yet, as they are stored at present, any morning you may hear that there is nothing left of them but ashes.
What madness to talk of moving the Capital! What idiots to breed another dissension of a hundred years as to where another Capital shall be, instead of making the most and best of the majestic one, bought at such cost, that already is!
Well, a day in the Patent-Office has caused this outburst. This building was built for the protection and display of the inventive genius of the country. But that genius finds itself fearfully “cabined and confined,” and almost crowded out by the elephantine proportions of the Home Department, which needs, almost beyond any other, a vast building of its own, all to itself. At first a single room was demanded for the Secretary of the Interior.The needs of his department were such, he has gone on annexing room after room of the noble Patent-Office, till its “inventive genius” finds itself crowded into a very small corner of the majestic building built with the proceeds of its own industry.
March 3, 1849, Congress passed an act to establish the Home Department, and enacted that said new executive branch of the Government of the United States should be called the Department of the Interior, and that the head of said Department should be called Secretary of the Interior, and that the Secretary should be placed upon the same plane with other Cabinet officers.
This act transferred to the Secretary of the Interior the supervisory power over the office of the Commissioner of Patents, exercised before by the Secretary of State; the same power, over the Commissioner of the General Land-Office, held previously by the Secretary of the Treasury; the same over the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which had been under the supervision of the Secretary of War; the same over the acts of the Commissioner of Pensions, who had previously reported to the Secretary of the Navy; also over the marshals and orders of taking and returning the census, previously managed by the Secretary of State; the same over accounts of marshals, clerks and officers of courts of the United States, previously exercised by the Secretary of the Treasury. The same act relieved the President of the duty of supervising the acts of the Commissioner of Public Buildings, placing that gentleman under the directions of the Interior Department; giving the Secretary control over the Board of Inspectors and the Warden of the Penitentiary of the District of Columbia.
Thus, you see, the Department of the Interior was made up, at the beginning, of slices cut from each one of the other departments of the Government. Subsequent acts of legislation have added new duties to the Home Department. The Department of Justice; the Department of Metropolitan Police; the accounts of marshals and clerks of the United States Courts, and of matters pertaining to the judiciary; the discontinuance of the office of Commissioner of Public Buildings, and the assignment of his duties to the Chief Engineer of the Army, with the duties and powers heretofore exercised by the Secretary of State over the Governors and Secretaries of the various territories. All have been transferred to the Department of the Interior. Admission of indigent insane persons, resident in the District of Columbia, to the Insane Asylum, also to the Columbia Institution for the deaf and dumb, and to the National Deaf-mute College, and of blind children to the Columbia Institution, all are only obtained through the Secretary of the Interior.
The office of the Secretary of the Interior is divided into seven divisions, as follows:
The “Disbursing Division,” through which all moneys, appropriated for the entire service of the department, pass.
The Division of the Indian Affairs; having charge of matters pertaining to the Indian office, and the various Indian tribes.
The Division of Lands and Railroads; having charge of matters pertaining to the General Land-Office, and the construction, &c., of land-grant railroads.
The Division of Pensions and Patents; having charge of matters pertaining to those offices.
The Division of Public Documents; having charge of the distribution of the public documents and the Department Library.
The Division of Appointments; having charge of all matters pertaining to the force of the department, the preparing, recording, etc., of Presidential appointments under the Interior Department.
The Superintendent of the building; having charge of all repairs, the oversight of the laboring force, heating apparatus, etc.
The head of the Department is the Secretary of the Interior. His subordinates are the Commissioners of the Public Lands, Patents, Indian Affairs, and Pensions, and the Superintendent of the Census. The Secretary is charged with the general supervision of matters relating to the public lands, the pensions granted by the Government, the management of the Indian tribes, the granting patents, the management of the Agricultural Bureau, of the lead and other mines of the United States, the affairs of the Penitentiary of the District of Columbia, the overland-routesto the Pacific, including the great Pacific Railways, the taking of the Census, and the direction of the acts of the Commissioner of Public Buildings, the Insane Hospital for the District of Columbia, and the Army and Navy, is also under his control.
The first Secretary of the Interior was Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, appointed by President Taylor; and Columbus Delano, of Ohio, is the present Secretary.
The General Land-Office was established as a branch of the Treasury Department by act of Congress, approved April 25, 1812, which authorized the appointment of a Commissioner, at a salary of $3,000 per annum, and theemployment of a Chief Clerk, and such other clerks as might be necessary to perform the work, at an annual compensation not to exceed, in the whole, $7,000.
By the act of July 4, 1836, the office was reorganized and the force increased. The number of clerks now employed is one hundred and fifty-four; and even this force is not sufficient to meet the requirements of a constantly growing business. Upon the creation of the Interior Department, in 1849, the Land-Office was placed under its jurisdiction.
The Commissioner of the General Land-Office is charged with the duty of supervising the surveys of private land claims, and also the survey and sale of the public lands of the United States. At present this supervision extends to seventeen surveying districts and ninety-two local land-offices.
The following table exhibits the progress of surveys and the disposal of public lands since the fiscal year, ending June 30, 1861:
This shows an increase of the number of surveyors’ general from nine to seventeen, and land-offices from fifty-eight to ninety-two, and an increase in the annual survey from 2,673,132 acres to 29,458,939 acres, and an increase in the number of acres disposed of from 1,337,932 to 11,864,975.64, for the year ending June 30, 1872.
The Land-Office audits its own accounts. It is also charged with laying off land-grants made to the various railroad schemes by Congress. The mines belonging to the Government are also in charge of this office.
The Commissioner of Pensions examines and adjudicates all claims arising under the various and numerous laws passed by Congress, granting bounty-lands or pensions for military and naval services rendered the United States at various times. The Rebellion greatly increased the pension list.
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs has charge of all the matters relating to the Indian tribes of the frontier. The Government has at sundry times purchased the lands of various tribes residing east of the Mississippi River, and has settled the Indians upon reservations in the extreme West. For some of these lands a perpetual annuity was granted the tribes; for others, an annuity for a certain specified time; and for others still, a temporary annuity, payable during the pleasure of the President or Congress. The total sum thus pledged to these tribes amounts to nearly twenty-one and a half millions. It is funded at five per cent., the interest alone being paid to the tribes; this interest amounts to over two hundred thousand dollars. It is paid in various ways—in money, in provisions, and in clothing. The Commissioner has charge of all these dealings with the savages.
Prior to Act of Congress of June 30, 1834, organizing the “Department of Indian Affairs,” Indian matters were managed by a Bureau, with a superintendent in charge, under the direction and control of the War Department, and under the organization, the department or office continued with the War Department, until March 3, 1849, when Congress created the Department of the Interior, and gave the supervisory and appellate power, exercised by the Secretary of War in relation to the acts of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to the Secretary of the new department.
A “Commissioner of Indian Affairs” was first authorized by Act of Congress, dated July 9, 1832, and the same law required the Secretary of War to prescribe a new set of regulations as to the mode in which the business of the Commissioner should be performed.
E. Herring was the first Commissioner, and his successors have been as follows: C. A. Harris, appointed in 1836; T. H. Crawford, 1838; Wm. Medell, 1845; O. Brown, 1849; L. Lee, 1850; G. W. Monypenny, 1853; J. W. Denver, 1857; C. E. Mix, 1858; A. B. Greenwood, 1859; W. P. Dole, 1861; D. N. Cooley, 1865; L. V. Bogy, 1866; N. G. Taylor, 1867; E. S. Parker, 1869; F. E. Walker, 1871; and E. P. Smith, 1873.
The Indian Department comprehended, under the new regulations provided for by the law of July 9, 1832, four superintendencies, thirteen agencies, and thirteen sub-agencies, having charge of about two hundred and fifty thousand Indians, inhabiting some of the States west of the Mississippi, and also what was then held to be “Indian Country,” defined by the first section of the law of June 30, 1834, regulating trade and intercourse withIndian tribes, to be “all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi and not within the State of Missouri and Louisiana, or the Territory of Arkansas, and, also, that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River and not within any State to which the Indian title has not been extinguished.”
By subsequent acquisition of territory from Mexico, the area of Indian country became greatly extended, with a consequent large addition to the Indian population within the jurisdiction of the Indian Department. In the beginning of the current year, the Department consisted of eight superintendencies, seventy agencies and special agencies, and three sub-agencies. At present there are four superintendencies, four having been abolished by act of Congress, February 14, 1873, providing in lieu thereof five Indian Inspectors, whose duty it is to visit every superintendency and agency, and examine into the affairs of the same, as often as once or twice a year, and to report their proceedings; sixty-eight agencies, nine special agencies and three sub-agencies, with an Indian population, approximately, of 300,000, exclusive of those in Alaska, estimated at between 50,000 and 75,000.
In the Indian service there is also a Board of “Indian Commissioners,” nine in number, authorized by act of Congress, approved April 10, 1869, men eminent for their intelligence and philanthropy, who serve without compensation, the object of the Commission being to co-operate with the President in efforts to maintain peace among the Indians, bring them upon reservations, relieve their necessities, and to encourage them in attempts at self-support.
The Census Bureau is now a permanent branch of theDepartment of the Interior. It is in charge of a superintendent, and is assigned the duty of compiling the statistics which constitute the Census of the Republic. This enumeration is made every ten years. Some idea of the magnitude of the task may be gained from the fact that the tabulation and publication of the census of 1870 were not completed in January, 1873.
The Bureau of Patents is a part of the Department of the Interior, but is in all its proportions and features so vast and imposing, that it is almost a separate department, as, indeed, it must become erelong. It is in charge of a Commissioner of Patents, who is appointed by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. It is intrusted with the duty of granting letters patent, securing to the inventor the control of and the reward from articles beneficial to civilization. It was formerly a part of the Treasury Department, and is one of the best known branches of the Government.
Patents are not, as some persons suppose, monopolies, but are protections granted to individuals as rewards for, and incentives to discoveries and inventions of all kinds pertaining to the useful arts. This Bureau is allowed to charge for these letters of protection only the cost of investigating and registering the invention. It is a self-supporting institution, its receipts being largely in excess of its expenditures.
If you have traced the many Bureaus of the Interior Department thus far, you have come to the conclusion that it needs a public building all to itself, and that it should be an immense one. A large brick building opposite the Patent-Office, on G street, is already exclusively occupied by the Bureau of Education.
The present Secretary of the Interior is Hon. Columbus Delano, of Ohio, a man who has been long in public life, first as Member of Congress from Ohio, then as Commissioner of Internal Revenue, now as Secretary of the Interior. I have but one objection to make to Mr. Delano in the position which he now holds. He found twelve-hundred-dollar-positions in his department filled, as they had been from the beginning, by women. He degrades them to nine-hundred-dollar-clerkships, to make place for his voters. Judging by the course he pursues, we may believe that he is of the same opinion as the Secretary of the Treasury, that “four hundred dollars per year are enough for any woman to earn,” unless she should be a Delano! I hope that Ohio will reward him by not giving him the desire of his heart and making him Senator, till he practices justice as the supreme virtue of a public servant.
Columbus Delano has a face which nature never weakened by cutting it down to absolute fineness, but added to its power by leaving it a little in the rough. Iron-gray hair, shaggy eyebrows beetling over a pair of straight-forward, out-looking gray eyes, make the more prominent features of a face which you willingly believe in as that of a strong and honorable man.