Part 6

THE OLD BUREAU OF ENGRAVING AND PRINTING ]

A shamefaced clerk was seen to emerge from the room. When the others rushed in they found the girl in a dead faint which was followed by hysterics. Then the women said, “Aha! you got what you deserved with your red dress, your loud manners, and flippant talk.”

The girl replied, “Well, I think you should have had the decency to tell me that before, if my dress and manners exposed me to insult. You will see, I shall learn.” Sure enough, the girl did learn to dress quietly, and is now an efficient, decorous helper.

The wife of one of the new-rich, who have come to Washington to spend their money in social life, was being taken through the Census Department when they had on the full force of several thousand. Looking over that crowd, every one of the intellectual rank of a first-class teacher, she said: “Ah! I see now what makes servants so very scarce in Washington!” Each one of these classed as of the rank of servants had passed an entrance examination which her ladyship could not have stood, even if her life had depended upon it.

One of the peculiar features of department life is that it seems to dry up the milk of human kindness. A man will move heaven and earth to get a high situation under the government, then when others ask from him less than he has asked of his friends, the applicant is made to feel like a beggar. He is advised to go home and tend to his own affairs—which may be very good advice, but comes with bad grace from a government official.

I knew a man from the South, the editor of a religious paper, the most important man in the county, who came to Washington to ask for the post-office of his own town. His credentials had the endorsement of every bank, every business house, every preacher, doctor, and teacher in his town. He was permitted to get as near headquarters as the Fourth Assistant Postmaster, where he was told Senator Blank would have that appointment. The Senator appointed a Catholic in that town where there are not over forty Catholics, and where a Lutheran College alone gets more mail than the entire Catholic population. The new man was a person _non grata_ to the entire town, but the Senator had paid a campaign debt.

Every person knows the sad life story of Kate Chase Sprague, but it will be fifty years before the full depth of her infamy can be fully told. Daughter of Salmon P. Chase, Senator from Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln, Chief Justice of the United States, the loved wife of Senator Sprague, of Rhode Island, and the leader of the highest social life of the capital, she was divorced, and then began a downward course of amours, flirtations, and baseness which had best remain untold for this generation.

Older people will remember that one of Grant’s Cabinet was forced to resign because of fraud in the War Department. Valuable contracts were let, and the wife of this official, totally unknown to her husband, took thousands of dollars for her influence in securing these contracts. At last trouble was threatened. Congress appointed a committee to investigate. The night before the exposure madame attended a great ball at one of the legations. The French Minister said: “I have been in most of the courts of Europe; I have never seen any one, not even queens, better dressed than madame.” She wore a dress literally covered with point-lace, a point-lace fan, and more than $40,000 worth of diamonds.

Three Congressmen present knew what the next day would reveal. On that day the Secretary was called before the committee. They soon saw that he knew nothing about the matter. Madame heard what was going on and suddenly appeared before the committee. She threw herself on her knees before them and entreated shelter from disgrace.

The Secretary resigned at once. He sacrificed his entire property to pay back the fraudulent money. He opened a law office in Washington, but soon after died; of course, people said he died of a broken heart. Madame went abroad at once, and did not return till after her husband’s death. She now conducts a house in Washington where men and women lose their souls in gambling or worse.

XV TREASURY DEPARTMENT

The Treasury building, on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street, was located by President Jackson just east of the White House so as to obstruct his view of the Capitol, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. It is said that he grew tired of the little differences of opinion between the commissioner and the architect, Robert Mills, and one day in ill humor he struck his staff in the earth and said: “I want the chief corner-stone of the Treasury building placed just here!” You may be sure it was placed just there.

The Secretary of the Treasury superintends the collection and disbursement of all government revenue from every source, except the Post-Office Department. It takes many buildings to provide for the work of the Treasury Department.

The Congressional Directory says:

The Secretary of the Treasury is charged by law with the management of the national finances. He prepares plans for the improvement of the revenue and for the support of the public credit; superintends the collection of the revenue, and prescribes the forms of keeping and rendering public accounts and of making returns; grants warrants for all moneys drawn from the Treasury in pursuance of appropriations made by law, and for the payment of moneys into the Treasury; and annually submits to Congress estimates of the probable revenues and disbursements of the Government.

He also controls the construction of public buildings; the coinage and printing of money; the administration of the Revenue-Cutter branch of the public service, and furnishes generally such information as may be required by either branch of Congress on all matters pertaining to the foregoing.

The routine work of the Secretary’s office is transacted in the offices of the Supervising Architect, Director of the Mint, Director of Engraving and Printing, and in the following divisions: Bookkeeping and Warrants; Appointments; Customs; Public Moneys; Loans and Currency; Revenue-Cutter; Stationery, Printing, and Blanks; Mails and Files; Special Agents, and Miscellaneous.

A few minutes’ thought on the above will show that this is the very heart of the government of our country. Its pulsations send the currency through all the avenues of commerce; if it became bankrupt, disaster would follow in every other department of the government, and the prosperity of other nations would be unfavorably affected.

The Treasury building was completed in 1841. It has undergone considerable enlargement and many modifications since that time. It is 460 feet on Fifteenth Street, and has a frontage of 264 feet on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is Grecian in architecture. On each of the four sides are large porticoes with most graceful yet massive Ionic columns. The flower gardens about the Treasury are among the most beautiful in the city.

It would greatly surprise Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, if he could see every day at 4 P.M. the 3,000 workers pour out of the 300 rooms of the great building at Fifteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and be told that this is only the central office of the Secretary of the Treasury. The salary list of this building alone is about half a million dollars annually.

The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet, and receives $8,000 a year for his services. He has two Assistant Secretaries, who each receive $4,500, and a Chief Clerk, who has a salary of $2,700. The Chiefs of Divisions receive about $2,500 each.

There are subtreasuries in most of the large cities of the Union; also assay offices in Boise City, Idaho, Charlotte, N. C., and St. Louis, Mo., to see that the money is kept pure and up to the standard.

The scales upon which the United States coin is weighed are said to be so accurate that if two pieces of paper, in all respects the same except that one has writing upon it, be laid one on either scale, the difference in weight of the one bearing writing upon it will show in the scale.

The cost of maintaining these subdivisions of the Treasury is nearly one and a half million dollars annually.

The First Comptroller seems to be the important man of the Treasury. Every claim is submitted to him. Not even the President’s salary can be paid unless he signs the warrant and vouchers for its correctness. His salary is $5,000 per annum, but it takes $83,000 to maintain all the appointments of his office.

The Treasurer of the United States receives $6,000 per year. He gives a bond for $150,000. He receives and disburses all the money of the country and has charge of the money vaults. He has an army of assistants.

The Treasurer’s report for 1901 says that the condition of the Treasury as to the volume and character of assets was never better, and, in spite of the unusual expense of the army in the Philippines and the raid on the Pension Bureau, nearly $78,000,000 surplus remained in the Treasury. On June 30, 1902, at the end of the fiscal year, the surplus was over $92,000,000. What a magnificent showing as to the prosperity of our country, and what an occasion for national thanksgiving!

No robbery of the Treasury vaults has ever been attempted. When one sees the solid walls of masonry and the patrol of soldiers, on duty night or day, with every spot bright with electric light, no such attempt seems likely to occur. The entire vaults inside are a network of electric wires. If, for instance, a tunnel were made under the building, and a robber should reach the vaults, the wires would ring up the Chief of Police, who has telephone connexion with Fort Meyer and the navy-yard, so that within twenty minutes a detachment of troops could be on the ground.

A few years ago a negro charwoman, in doing her cleaning, found a package of bonds of more than a million dollars in value. That faithful woman sat by the package all night guarding it, knowing that it must be of great value. Her faithfulness was rewarded with a life position. Bowed and broken, she was an historic figure in the building until last year, when she died.

In this building all money from the Printing Bureau and the mints is counted and verified. Here worn money, that which has been buried, rotted by water or charred by fire, is identified by the skilled eyes and hands of women. Of the charred money received from the great fire in Chicago, eighty per cent. was identified, and new money issued in its place. Sometimes money taken from bodies long drowned or buried has to be handled. In such cases these women have the entire room to themselves, as their usual neighbors find that business in other quarters needs immediate attention.

The banks of large cities send in their soiled money weekly or monthly and receive fresh notes in exchange, the government paying transportation both ways. This soiled money is made into pulp, which is sold to paper-makers at about $40 a ton.

It is only the old money that is counterfeited. Counterfeiters rumple and muss their money to give it the appearance of being long in use. Women are especially skilled in detecting counterfeit money. If among the returned coins or notes one single piece proves to be counterfeit, the amount is deducted from the salary of the examiner. Yet this great government pays these women less than two-thirds what it would pay to men for the same service, if men could do it at all.

From the government of the United States it would seem that the world had a right to expect that ideal justice which each soul shall receive when it stands in the presence of Eternal Justice.

The United States Treasury has charge of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, where all the paper money, postage, revenue stamps, and bonds are made.

Bills, when sent from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, require the signatures of officials of the bank from which they are to be issued before becoming legal tender.

Secretary Shaw has at the Bureau of Printing and Engraving his personal representative, who locks up the plates, sees to the minutiæ of things, so that even the smallest scrap of paper bearing government printing must be shown, or the house is closed and search made till it is found.

The custom officers who insult and browbeat you at the port are of this department. Once on arriving at New York, after being very ill all the way from Antwerp, I had declared I had nothing dutiable, yet in spite of that every article in my trunk was laid out on the dirty floor of the custom-house. When I saw the bottom of the trunk, I said: “Well, you have only proved what I told you. I believe you think because I am trembling from weakness that I am frightened?” “Yes, that is about the size of it; there is your trunk, you may put the things back.” “No,” I said, “my baggage is checked through, and I am not able to pack it.” I saw with some satisfaction the custom-house officer do the packing. It had required my best efforts to get the stuff into the trunk, but he did it.

This country has very silly custom-house rules on personal clothing and small articles of art and vertu, and the average artistic standard of dress and home ornamentation of the country is lowered by these ridiculous embargoes.

In 1895 I was abroad with a company of Presbyterians; among them was Professor G., of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of California. He happened to fall in with a little coterie of friends of whom I was one. The most of us bought photos and souvenirs in almost every city. The professor bought nothing. One day he said: “I would so like to have brought my wife with me, but I was not able to do so. I shall be very saving, so I can take her back a nice present.” When we were in Italy some fool woman suggested a cameo pin as a suitable and beautiful present for his wife. Cameo pins have been out of fashion for twenty years. He purchased one of great beauty for $30. As we came into port, a friend said: “Professor, you had better let some woman wear that pin for you or you will have trouble.” “Thank you, no; I expect to pay the required duty to my country.” “Oh, you do not know your country yet; you’ll get a dose!” He paid $27 duty, and had not money enough left to get home. I felt that this duty was an outrage. Things of beauty which are not for sale should surely be admitted free.

The Treasury is the heart of the whole machine that we call the “United States Government.”

XVI SECRET SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY OF THE UNITED STATES

Every one is interested in what is called the Secret Service of the government. The name covers many things, altho we usually associate it with the government’s protection of the coin and greenback currency of the country.

The detectives of this department are often employed in assisting to find out or run down robbers of banks, railroad trains, express offices, etc. They are also used in detecting frauds at the custom-houses, frauds in the departments of justice, pertaining to naturalization papers, post-office robberies, and attacks on the Mint. In the Pension Bureau they unearth fraudulent attempts to represent dead pensioners, etc. For work outside of their own departments they are paid by their employers.

In the last report of the Secret Service, dated July 1, 1902, the chief enumerates 253 persons convicted of attempt of counterfeiting currency, and 106 yet awaiting action of the Court. The arrests for the current year have numbered 573; of these, 413 were born in the United States; of the 106 remaining, Italy furnished 65 counterfeiters; Germany, 25; Ireland, 15; the others, except 6 Mexicans, are of the different countries of Europe. Of the different States, New York produced 85 counterfeiters (including those who make false representations of any kind in passing currency); Missouri, 47; Pennsylvania, 45; while almost every State has one or more. Altered and counterfeit notes to the value of $46,004.95 have been captured, and counterfeit coins to the value of $19,828.47.

The Chief of the Secret Service says that the year has been fruitful in that class of criminals who alter bills of small denomination to one of higher value. Any change in a bill renders the maker liable to a fine of $5,000, or fifteen years in prison, or both.

The walls of the Secret Service office are covered with samples of counterfeiters’ work. The history of each would sound like a dime novel, but the government is certain to catch any one who persists in demoralizing the currency. Chief John E. Wilkie, a first-class Chicago newspaper man, was brought East by Secretary Gage. He has called to his assistance, as Chief Clerk, Mr. W. H. Moran, who learned his business from Mr. Brooks, one of the best detectives any country has yet produced. Other officials tell me the office has never been more ably conducted than it is at present.

This bureau is urging that for persistent crime a longer penal sentence shall be given. To illustrate the persistence of two of these criminals, the following extracts from the Secret Service records are, by courtesy of the bureau, submitted:

JOHN MULVEY, _alias_ JAMES CLARK, arrested October 16, 1883, at New York, N. Y., for having in possession and passing counterfeit coin. Sentenced, October 22, 1883, to _three years_ in Auburn, N. Y., penitentiary and fined $1.

WILLIAM STEVENS, _alias_ JOHN W. MURRAY, _alias_ JACK MULVEY, was again arrested June 14, 1886, at Baltimore, for passing counterfeit 25c. silver coins, and was sentenced, September 7, 1886, to serve _one year_ in Maryland penitentiary and fined $100.

Was again arrested under the same name October 5, 1887, at Philadelphia, Pa., for passing and having in possession 25c. coins, and sentenced, December 1, 1887, to _eighteen months_ in the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania and fined.

JOHN W. MURRAY, _alias_ WILLIAM STEVENS, _alias_ JACK MULVEY, was again arrested, July 10, 1889, at Hoboken, N. J., for passing counterfeit standard $1, 25c., and 10c. coins, and sentenced, January 22, 1890, to _six months_ in State Prison at Trenton, N. J., and pay costs.

JACK MULVEY, _alias_ JAMES W., _alias_ JOHN CLARK, _alias_ JOHN W. MURRAY, _alias_ “PANTS,” _alias_ STEVENS, etc., was again arrested January 12, 1891, at Pittsburg, Pa., for having in possession and attempting to pass counterfeit 50c. coins, and was sentenced, March 5, 1891, to _two years_ in Western Penitentiary at Allegheny, Pa., and fined $25.

JOHN MURRAY, _alias_ JACK MULVEY, was again arrested, January 25, 1894, at Chicago, Ill., for manufacturing counterfeit 25c. and 10c. coins and having same in possession, and was sentenced, March 12. 1894, to _three years and six months_ at hard labor in the penitentiary at Joliet, Ill., and to pay a fine of $1.

JAMES FOLEY, _alias_ JACK MURRAY, _alias_ JACK MULVEY, was again arrested, February 24, 1897, at Chicago, Ill., for having in possession and passing counterfeit silver dimes, and escaped March 22, 1897, but was rearrested, under the name of JOHN O’KEEFE, in New York, N. Y., April 6, 1897, for passing counterfeit 10c. pieces, and sentenced. May 12, 1897, to _seven years_ in Clinton Prison and fined $1. Released from this prison February 27, 1902.

Another case from the records of the Secret Service would read as follows:

One day the doors of the Moundsville, W. Va., prison opened on a tall, slender, mild-eyed man, upon whose face and form time and confinement had left their impress, and he passed out to take up again the broken thread of his life.

This was John Ogle’s first day of freedom for more than three years. On July 4, 1898, he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for trying to increase the negotiable value of one-dollar bills by altering their denominational characteristics.

Little more than a year before his brother, Miles, was released from the Ohio penitentiary, where he had paid the extreme penalty imposed by law for spurious money making, only to die two days later of paralysis, with which he had been hopelessly stricken over a year before.

The Ogles, father and sons, during the past fifty years have had much to do with the making of the criminal history of this country. George Ogle, the father, was a river pirate and farmhouse plunderer, the Ohio River and its tributaries being the scene of his operations. The sons, bred in an atmosphere of crime, early embarked in independent unlawful enterprises. Miles displayed pugnacity, intrepidity, and skill, while John was shrewd, plausible, and cunning.

After serving five years for killing an officer who attempted to arrest the family, and when but twenty-six years old, Miles allied himself with the notorious “Reno” gang of bandits, and became the pupil and confederate of Peter McCartney, that past master of the counterfeiter’s art. How well he applied himself the records of the Secret Service will testify. An even dozen skilfully executed spurious note issues were directly traceable to him, despite the fact that two-thirds of his manhood were spent behind prison walls.

John Ogle, while not possessed of the dangerous skill of his brother, was his equal in hardihood, and, in his way, quite as detrimental to society. For cool daring, ingenuity, and resourcefulness he was without a peer in his chosen profession, and some of his escapes from the officers of the law bordered on the miraculous. He was introduced to prison life in 1864, being sentenced in the fall of that year to five years in the Jeffersonville, Ind., penitentiary for burglary. Shortly after his release he was traced to Cairo, Ill., with twenty-eight hundred dollars of counterfeit money intended for one of Miles’ customers, and, after a desperate fight, was placed in jail. He managed in some way to effect his escape, but was soon recaptured at Pittsburg. This time he told the officers that he knew of a big “plant” of spurious bills and tools near Oyster Point, Md., which he was willing to turn up if it would benefit him. Being assured of leniency, he started with a marshal for the hiding-place. _En route_ he managed to elude the watchfulness of his guard, and jumped from the car-window while the train was at full speed. At Bolivar, Tenn., Ogle was arrested, January 8, 1872, with five hundred dollars of counterfeit money in his pocket. A sentence of ten years was imposed; but John had a reputation to sustain, so he broke from the jail where he was temporarily confined awaiting transportation to the penitentiary. Several months later he was arrested and indicted at Cincinnati for passing bad five-dollar bills. Pending trial, he was released on five thousand dollars bail, which he promptly forfeited, and was again a fugitive.