CHAPTER XXXIV.

WOMAN’S WORK IN THE DEPARTMENTS—WHAT THEY DO AND HOW THEY DO IT.

Women Experts in the Treasury—General Spinner’s Opinion—A Woman’s Logic—The Gifts of Women—Their Superiority to Men—Money Burnt in the Chicago Fire—Cases of Valuable Rubbish—Identifying Burnt Greenbacks—The Treasure Saved—The Ashes of the Boston Fire—From the Bottom of the Mississippi—Mrs. Patterson Saves a “Pile” of Money—Money in the Toes of Stockings—In the Stomachs of Men and Beasts—From the Bodies of the Murdered and Drowned—Not Fairly Paid—One Hundred and Eighty Women at Work—“The Broom Brigade”—Scrubbing the Floors—The Soldier’s Widow—Stories which Might be Told—Meditating Suicide—The Struggle of Life—How a Thousand Women are Employed—Speaking of Their Characters—The Ill-paid Servants of the Country—Chief-Justice Taney’s Daughters—Colonel Albert Johnson’s Daughter—A Place Where Men are Not Employed—Writing “for the Press”—Miss Grundy of New York—The Internal Revenue Bureau—“Marvels of Mechanical Beauty”—Women of Business Capacity—A Lady as Big as Two Books!—In a Man’s Place—A Disgrace to the Nation—Working for Two, Paid for One—How “Retrenchment” is Carried Out—In the Departments—Beaten by a Woman—The Post Office Department—Folding “Dead Letters”—A Woman who has Worked Well—“Sorrow Does Not Kill”—The Patent Office—The Agricultural Department—Changes Which Should be Made.

In several branches of the Treasury service, women have risen to the proficiency of experts. This is especially true of them as rapid and accurate counters, as restorers of mutilated currency and as counterfeit detectors.

General Spinner says: “A man will examine a note systematically and deduce logically, from the imperfect engraving, blurred vignette or indistinct signature, that it is counterfeit, and be wrong four cases out of ten. A woman picks up a note, looks at it in a desultory fashion of her own, and says: ‘That’s counterfeit.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because it is,’ she answers promptly, and she is right eleven cases out of twelve.” Yet this almost unerring accuracy is by no means the result of mere instinct, or of hap-hazard chance. It is the sequence of subtle perception, of fine, keen vision, and of exquisite sensitiveness of touch.

All women do not excel as counterfeit-detectors; nor can all become experts as restorers and counters of currency. But wherever a woman possesses native quickness, combined with power of concentration, with training and experience, she in time commands an absolute skill in her work, which, it has been proved, it is impossible for men to attain. Her very fineness of touch, swiftness of movement, and subtlety of sight give her this advantage. Thus when notes are defaced or charred beyond ordinary recognition, they are placed in the hands of women for identification.

After the great Chicago fire in 1871, cases of money to the value of one hundred and sixty-four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven dollars and ninety-eight cents, were sent to the United States Treasury for identification. They consisted of legal tenders, National State bank and fractional notes, bonds, certificates and coupons, internal revenue and postage stamps, all so shrivelled and burned, that they crumbled to the touch and defied unaided eyesight. All these charred treasures were placed in the hands of a committee of six ladies, for identification. What patience, practice, skill, were indispensable to the fulfilment of this task, it is not difficult to conjecture.

“After unpacking the money from the raw cotton in which it travelled, as jealously swathed as the most precious jewellery, the ladies separated each small piece with thin knives made for the purpose, then laying the blackened fragments on sheets of blotting-paper, they decided by close scrutiny the value, genuineness and nature of the note. Magnifying glasses were provided, but seldom used, except for the deciphering of coupon-numbers or other minute details. The pieces were then pasted on thin paper, the bank-notes returned to their respective banks, and the United States money put in sealed envelopes and delivered to a committee of four, who superintended the final burning. The amount of one million, two hundred and twenty-six thousand, three hundred and forty-one dollars and thirty-three cents was identified—over seventy-six per cent. of the whole.”

A year later, Boston, from the ruins of its great fire, gathered the ashes of its money and sent it to the United States Treasury, begging identification and aid in restoration. Eighty-three cases came from that city, and these were so carefully packed that the labor of identification was greatly lightened. Of the eighty-eight thousand, eight hundred and twelve dollars and ninety-nine cents, which they contained, over ninety per cent. of the whole was identified by the same six ladies, who saved so much to individuals and to the Government from the Chicago fire.

Besides money, a large amount of checks, drafts, promissory notes, insurance policies, and other valuable papers were identified by these same clear eyes and patient hands, and restored to their owners. The entire responsibility of the whole amount rested on them. The money was delivered to them, when it came, and on their reports all remittances on it were made. It took over six months of constant labor to identify the money from these fires.

The names of this committee of six are Mrs. M. J. Patterson, Miss Pearl, Mrs. Davis, Miss Schriner, Miss Wright, and Miss Powers. “Mrs. Patterson has been engaged for seven or eight years on what are called ‘affidavit cases’—cases where the money is too badly mutilated to be redeemed in the regular way, and the sender testifying under oath that the missing fragments are totally destroyed, receives whatever proportion of the original value allowed by the rules.”

The most noted case that she ever worked on was that of a paymaster’s trunk that was sunk in the Mississippi, in the _Robert Carter_. After lying three years in the bottom of the river, the steamer was raised, and the money, soaked, rotten and obliterated, given to Mrs. Patterson for identification. She saved one hundred and eighty-five thousand out of two hundred thousand dollars, and the express company, which was responsible for the original amount, presented her with five hundred dollars, as a recognition of her services.

All the money which she identifies passes from the hands of this lady to a committee of three—two gentlemen, one from the Treasurer’s and one from the Register’s office, and a lady from the Secretary’s office. The duties of these three persons are identical. They re-count the money, seal it with the official seal of the three offices, and for so doing receive, per year, the gentlemen each eighteen hundred dollars, the lady twelve hundred dollars—one more illustration of the sort of justice between the work of men and women, which prevails in the Treasury service!

The identification and restoration of defaced and mutilated notes is a very difficult and important operation. From the toes of stockings, in which they have been washed and dissolved; from the stomachs of animals, and even of men; from the bodies of drowned and murdered human beings; from the holes of vice and of deadly disease, these fragments of money, whose lines are often utterly obliterated, whose tissues emit the foulest smells, come to the Treasury, and are committed wholly to the supervision and skill of women.

Let any just mind decide whether such labor does not deserve to be recognized and rewarded absolutely on its own merits. Such is its acknowledged value, that these Government experts have been allowed to go to distant parts of the country, to restore burnt money belonging to Adams’ Express Company, because it was known that there was no one else in the land, who could perform this service.

The whole basement floor of the north wing of the Treasury is occupied by the busy counters of mutilated money. Here sit one hundred and eighty women counters, restorers and detectors. Side by side, we see the faded and the blooming face. Here is the woman, worn and weary—born, more than likely, to ease and luxury—thankfully working to support herself and her children; and at the very next table, a maiden, whose fresh youth, care has not yet worn out—each working with equal thankfulness, to support herself, and besides, perhaps, father and mother, brother, sister or child.

The time of toil, for one who must earn her living, is not long; indeed, the hours are fewer than the average hours of ordinary labor. She does not complain of them; she is grateful for her chance. Yet her working-day is as long as her brother’s. Her chance, alone, is less. For the same hours and the same toil, her stipend is one-fourth smaller than his smallest.

At three o’clock P. M., hats and shawls come down from their pegs, lunch-baskets come forth from their hiding-places, the great corridors, and porticoes, and broad streets are thronged with homeward-wending workers. For the space of half an hour, the Treasury-offices and halls seem deserted, and then—Lo! the Broom Brigade! Cobwebs, dust and dirt, no longer dim the granite steps, the tessellated floors, the marble surfaces of the Treasury-building, as they used to do, years ago. Congress has provided a Broom Brigade, with fifteen dollars a month, to pay each member—and here they come, the sweepers, the dusters and the scrubbers—ninety women!

Three years ago, was established the present efficient system of daily cleaning of the Treasury, exclusively under feminine control, with what perfect result, all who remember the Treasury as it was, and see it as it is, can bear witness.

These ninety women-workers are under the exclusive control of a lady custodian. The organization, supervision, general control, payment, etc., of this small army of sweepers, brushers and scrubbers, all devolve on her. She is a fair and stately woman, wearing a crown of snow-white hair, her soul looking out of eyes clear and bright, yet of tender blue. Her face tells its own story of sorrow outlived, and of deep human sympathy. Did it tell any other, she would not be the right woman in the right place. No woman who has not suffered, who is not in profound sympathy with every form of human poverty and want, could of right reign over an army of women toilers, sweeping, scrubbing for bread. At 4 P. M., each day, ninety women enter a little room on the basement floor of the Treasury, there to exchange their decent street dress for the dusty garments of toil. As they ascend the broad stairs and disperse—broom, duster, or scrubbing-brush in hand—to make the beautiful offices and broad halls fresh and bright for the next coming day, the lady who guards and guides them all—who knows the history of each one—what stories she might tell!

Here is a little woman whose husband was killed in the Union army, leaving her nothing but his memory, his small pension, and a pair of brave hands to support herself and three little ones. Here are two bright little colored girls. They are students in Howard’s University, and come every day after school, the long way to the Treasury, to earn a part of the money which is to insure their education. Here is a young woman whose keenly lined, sorrowful face is a history. “Months ago she came to the silver-haired lady in the custodian’s room, and asked for work of any kind. The possibility to grant her request did not then exist, and again and again, with little hope, she came. At last she applied when some necessitous vacancy in the ranks of workers rendered it possible for the lady to assign her at once to a place of employment; and gladly she gave it, for the petitioner was wan and despairing. After work and the departure of the throng, she again sought the lady, to thank her on her knees ‘for saving her life.’ She said, ‘I had made up my mind to take my life if you refused me; I had reached the end of every thing.’ Then followed the oft-repeated story—deception, desertion, desperation, and the one last struggle to live”—to live honestly by honest, albeit the lowliest toil.

“Many a soldier’s widow, struggling with smallest fortune, has occasion to be thankful for the fifteen dollars earned here every month, although the walk and work seem insufferable at times. Many a soldier’s orphan is sustained by the stroke of brush and broom, making hall and stair and wall brightly clean to the step and sight of coming visitors from far and near, and the same shining polish which some strangers may admire, on the perspected marble floors and wrought pilasters, is a source and means of maintenance to humble homes when a death, desertion, and (O! sadly often) drunkenness has removed the head and protector, and in which life means only toil and sorrow. Every one of these ninety women has her own story of trouble, and want, and endurance, which made up her past, and won for her, her niche in this scheme of labor.”

Near a thousand women, from the toilers of the tubs under its roof, to the Brush-and-Broom Brigade in its basement, are employed in the Treasury. Their labor ranges from the lowliest manual toil, to the highest intellectual employment. In the social scale they measure the entire gamut of society. In isolated instances, women of exceptional character may still hold positions in the Treasury, and in so large a number, and under an unjust system of appointment, it would be strange if no such case could be found. But so powerful is the public sentiment roused against such appointments, it is impossible that they should be longer permitted, if known. The deepest wrong which their presence ever inflicted, was the unjust suspicion which they brought upon a large body of intelligent, pure women. The truth is, there is not another company of women-workers in the land which numbers so many ladies of high character, intelligence, culture, and social position.

The country is not aware to what an extent its most noble public servants have died poor, nor how many of their wives and daughters have sought the Government Civil Service as the means of honorable self-support.

Until within a short time, when the friends of their father raised a fund for their support, the daughters of Chief-Justice Taney were employed in the Treasury. The fair young orphan daughter of Robert J. Walker, once Secretary of the Treasury, now supports herself by service in the Internal Revenue. Governor Fairchild, of Wisconsin, found his beautiful wife, the daughter of a distinguished public man, occupying a desk in the Treasury. Mrs. Mary Johnson, daughter of Colonel Albert, who for a long series of years was head of the Topographical Bureau, has been for ten years a clerk in the Treasury. Her husband was Consul at Florence, where he died. Her father passing away soon after, she found herself alone, with two young sons to rear and educate. She became a Government clerk, or, as that title is now officially denied to a woman, “a Government _employé_.” Her sons are growing up to honor her, one having entered the Naval School at Annapolis. Mrs. Tilton, sister of General Robert Ould, is an “_employé_” in the Internal Revenue. The widow of Captain Ringgold is also there.

The Quarter-master-General’s Office, which is a division of the War Department, has been almost exclusively set apart for the widows, daughters, and sisters of officers of army or navy, killed or injured in the war. Almost without exception, the “_employés_” of this office are gentlewomen. It is filled with elegant and accomplished women, some of whom are remarkable for their literary and scientific attainments. These ladies now occupy offices provided in a plain building on Fifteenth street. Their rooms are smaller and much more private than those of the Treasury opposite. Their work is the copying, recording, and registering of the letters of the department. No men are employed in these offices. Their superintendent is a lady, who has entire supervision of the ladies and the labor of this division. She is the widow of a naval officer who died in the service, a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, and occupies now, as she has all her life, the highest social position. She has children to support, and carries heavy official responsibilities—her duties are identical with those of the head of any other bureau—she receives only the stipend of the lowest male clerk, twelve hundred dollars. Elizabeth Akers Allen (Florence Percy), whose deep and tender lyrics call forth such universal response, held a position in this office until her last marriage.

Women of education and the finest intellectual gifts are to be found in every department. No inconsiderable number attempt to bring their meagre nine hundred dollar salary up to the most ignorant man _employé’s_ twelve hundred, by writing for the press, or pursuing some artistic employment outside of office hours.

The Treasury boasts of a number of more than ordinary women correspondents, whose letters have attracted wide attention by the really important information which they have imparted, concerning internal workings of Departmental life and service. Foremost among these, is Miss Austine Snead (Miss Grundy, of the New York World). Miss Snead is the only and fatherless daughter of an accomplished gentleman. She is a “Class-child” of Harvard College, a loyal Kentuckian whom, with her youthful and lovely mother, the vicissitudes of war drifted to the one work-shop of the Nation open to women. The loss of her position, by change of administration, forced her to turn to the chance of journalism, and in the branch of the profession which she entered, she rose at once to the foremost rank. Mrs. Snead, formerly a famous _belle_ of Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the most patient, faithful, and accurate counters in the redemption division of the Treasury, and is beside, weekly correspondent of the _Louisville Courier Journal_. Both are women who wear industry, integrity, and honor as their jewels, far dearer to them than all the lost treasures of Fortune’s more prosperous days.

The Internal Revenue Bureau, a branch of the Treasury Service, and occupying beautiful apartments in the Treasury Building, employs a large number of women. Copying, recording, filing of letters, and keeping accounts, make the chief work of this division. It demands a high order of clerical ability, and the books kept by these ladies are marvels of mechanical beauty.

The complications and immensity of the Internal Revenue Service, make this one of the busiest offices in the entire Department. It contains from forty-five to fifty women—_employés_. Beside those who execute the exquisite copper-plate copying, there are many whose whole duty is “head work.” This consists of examining, sorting, and filing the different daily communications received at the office. These are of one hundred and fifty varieties, concerning internal revenue, taxes, etc., subjects usually supposed not to be particularly lucid to the average feminine mind. Many are employed in examining, approving, and recording reports of surveys of distilleries, and other important papers; and such is the estimate placed on their business capacity, as thus applied, that their opinions on the papers are accepted without question.

At one of these desks sits a lovely sylph-like creature, whose bird-like hands always reminds me of Charlotte Bronté’s. She is scarcely bigger than the two big books which she handles and “keeps”—and to see her at them, perched upon a high stool, _is_ “a sight.” Born and reared in affluence, fragile in constitution, and exquisitely sensitive in organism, she is yet intellectually one of the best clerks—no “_employés_” in the Bureau. Years ago, she was placed at this eighteen hundred dollar desk, which a man-clerk had just vacated. She has filled it, performing its duties for seven or eight years, for the woman’s stipend of nine hundred dollars. When the new Civil Service Rules first went into operation, she was awarded twelve hundred dollars per annum, for her service from that date. To have awarded her the remaining six hundred dollars, which was paid the man at the same desk, for doing the same work, would have been an equality of justice, from which the average official masculine mind instinctively recoiled.

_Apropos_ of the preponderance of favor with which this same official masculine mind is able to regard and reward itself, is the case of a lady in another division. She has mathematical genius, and is one of the best practical mathematicians in the Treasury Department. Many of the statistical tables, for reports to Congress, are made out by her. Members of Congress, on the most important committees, do not disdain to come to her for assistance in making out their reports. Near two years ago, a man-clerk, in the same room with this lady, (who received his appointment through political favoritism,) became so dissipated, that he was totally unfitted to fulfil the duties of his desk, and he was carried by his friends to an inebriate asylum. Since that time, this lady, in addition to the arduous duties of her own desk, has performed all the labor accruing to that of the absent inebriate. She whose official existence as a clerk is denied by the legislators who employ her, has performed steadily, for many months, the labor of two men-clerks. How much does she receive for so doing? Nine hundred dollars a year. The eighteen hundred dollars, which she earns at one desk, is paid to the drunkard in whose name she earns it!

The Government, who support this man for being a drunkard, forces a woman to do his work for nothing, or lose the chance of earning the pittance paid to her in her own name. This lady, broken in health by her long-continued and overtaxing toil, sees what before her? Surely not recognition or justice from the Government which she serves and honors, while it, through selfishness and injustice, disgraces itself.

Of the forty-five ladies in the Internal Revenue Bureau, there is but one, and she fifty years of age, who has not more than herself to support on the pittance which she is paid. Nevertheless, whenever a spasmodic cry of “retrenchment” is raised, three women are always dismissed from office, to one man, although the men so greatly outnumber the women, to say nothing of their being so much more expensive.

“One of the greatest advocates of economy took work from a woman whose pay was the invariable nine hundred dollars per year, to give it to a man, who received for doing it, sixteen hundred dollars. No complaint was made of her manner of doing the work, but the head of the division said that she could count money, and he had not enough work for the men. Nothing was said of dismissing the superfluous male clerks. The work given the manly mind, in this instance, was the entering of dates of redemption opposite the numbers of redeemed notes. A child of ten years could scarcely have blundered at it. The same date was written sometimes for two weeks at a time.”

The lady at the head of the woman’s division of the Internal Revenue Bureau, has filled the position, with marked efficiency, for ten years, and upon the adoption of the new Civil Service Rules, she was authorized to receive eighteen hundred dollars per annum.

The lady who is one of the librarians of the library of the Treasury, is an accomplished linguist, a very intellectual woman. She was appointed by Mr. Boutwell, and received sixteen hundred dollars.

There are some very important desks filled by ladies in the Fifth Auditor’s office. Into their hands come all consular reports. To fulfil their duties efficiently, they must possess a knowledge of banking, as well as of mathematics.

Before the Civil Service Rules were vetoed, several ladies competed in one, two, and three examinations. Thus several won, by pure intellectual test, twelve hundred dollars, sixteen hundred dollars, eighteen hundred dollars, and one or two, I believe, a twenty-two hundred dollars position.

In the office of the Comptroller of the Treasury, are some very important desks filled by ladies. One young lady in this office has charge of the correspondence with the national banks and engraving companies. This involves a complicated routine. The desk was formerly filled by a man who received fourteen hundred dollars. It was taken from him because he was two hundred letters behind date. The work which has been in charge of this lady for six or seven years, at nine hundred dollars per annum, is always even with the day.

Another young lady, in this office, prepares an abstract of the circulation issued and returned by national banks, by means of which an immediate answer can be given, when information is asked, as to the outstanding circulation of any particular bank. Another laborious task, performed in this office by a lady, is the preparation of an abstract of the number of notes of each denomination and issue, work requiring great intellectual exactness and care.

In the Post Office Department, there are forty-seven women who address “returned letters,” _i. e._, letters which have miscarried, and which are to be returned, if the signature, or anything inside the letter, gives a clue to whom it is to be sent. There are ten women who fold “dead letters,” and three who translate foreign letters.

The lady in charge of the women clerks in the Dead-Letter Office, is the daughter of an officer high in rank in the army, now dead. Her grandfather was the President of a New England college. Mrs. Pettigru King, whose father was the Governor of South Carolina, and a member of the United States Senate, herself a woman of remarkable talents, was long employed in the Dead-Letter Office. Sitting among many younger women, her hands flying as swift as any of theirs—the daily task, that of re-directing two hundred letters, usually completed by her before that of any one else—we see a fair, round-faced, blue-eyed woman, whose sudden, bright glance and rapid movements at once fix our attention. She looks to be about fifty; she is in reality over seventy years of age. She and her history combined, probably make as remarkable a fact as the Dead-Letter Office contains. She is the widow of a clergyman. When the war broke out, her only son became hopelessly insane. “As he could not go to the war, I went myself,” she said. As the Assistant-Manager of the United States Sanitary Committee for an entire State, she raised, in money, ten thousand dollars, and collected and distributed ninety thousand hospital articles. She was in the field, in the hospital, and travelling between certain large cities, till the close of the war. Just as she finished her great work, she fell and broke one of her limbs. This confined her to her room for six months. In the meantime, her daughter’s husband died, leaving her with three little children, and no income. Soon after, the mother lost what little she had, and the entire family were left penniless. After an unsuccessful attempt at the widow’s forlorn hope, “keeping boarders,” mother and daughter came to Washington, and sought for positions in the Departments. “Friends tried to dissuade us,” said the old lady. “They told us that we must not come here, to mingle with such people as they thought were in the Departments. We have _not_ seen them. I have been three years in the Post Office Department, and my daughter in the Treasury, and we have met none but respectable women.”

Three winters ago, by act of Congress, she was allowed to place her insane son in the Lunatic Asylum here, free of charge, leaving her at liberty to assist her daughter in the support of her young family. Notwithstanding her war services, and the names of twenty prominent men in her native State attached to her papers, it took her six months to obtain, for herself and daughter, the chances to labor which she sought. “Sorrow does not kill,” she says, and as we look into her beaming eyes, we say it does not even extinguish the brightness of a soul forever young,—and yet this lady, in a few eventful years, “lived through sorrow enough to break any heart less stout than hers.”

In the Patent Office, fifty-two women clerks are allowed by law. A few women are employed in copying Pension Rolls in the Pension Office, who have a room provided for them in the Patent Office. Ten or twelve women have work given them from the Patent Office, which they do at their homes. This work, as well as that done in the Office, consists chiefly of the drawing of models. Every model of all the tens of thousands received in the Patent Office, from the beginning to the present day, has thus been re-produced and preserved. Glazed transparent linen is placed over the engraved lines, and through this, with ink and stencil, the most intricate and exquisite lines are drawn. To do this work perfectly, a lady must be something of an artist and draughtswoman. Magnifying glasses are used, and even with their aid, the work is most trying, and often destructive to the eyesight. The salary fixed for this work is ten hundred dollars per annum. Those who take their work home, and are paid by the piece, make as much as those who give the work will allow. Here, of course, is a large opportunity for favoritism and injustice. Thus favorites are often allowed to do twice their share, while others get barely work enough to subsist.

The Agricultural Department affords temporary employment for numbers of women, for two or three months of the year, and two have permanent positions there. The temporary work is the putting up of seeds for universal distribution, and occasionally copying is given out. Of the two ladies who find constant employment there, one is the assistant of Professor Glover, in taking charge of the Museum. She is the widow of a western editor, and at one time had exclusive control of a public journal (an agricultural one,) herself. She is a woman of large intelligence, a proficient in botany and natural history, which fact gave her, her present position, and enabled her to fill it with credit to herself. The other lady _employé_ is a taxidermist, who prepares the birds and insects for the Museum. The officers of this Department regard her as a proficient in her profession. She is a German, has been connected with the Department over six years, and has a room provided for her in the beautiful agricultural building.

Woman’s work in the Government Printing-Office, remains yet to be noticed, but enough has been mentioned, to prove its value in other branches of the Civil Service. It would be strange if so large a hive held no drones. It is doubtless true, that while many women are not only qualified, but actually perform the duties of the highest class desks, for an unjust pittance, many more do not even earn their nine hundred dollars per annum. There could be no more striking proof of the inequality and injustice which prevail in our Civil Service, than the fact that such persons, men and women, are appointed by men in power, really to be supported by the Government, and receive from that Government, for inefficiency and idleness, all, and more, than is paid often to the most intellectual, the most efficient, the most devoted of its servants.