In reply to your letter relative to amounts disallowed for use of telephone for your office, you are informed that the said expenditures were made without the authority of this office, and it is therefore deemed advisable not to approve the same.
Your authority for a telephone was for one year beginning January 1, 1884. At the expiration of the time named, if you desire to continue the telephone service, you should make application to the First Assistant Postmaster-General for a renewal of the same.
The multitude of claims of the same kind which the legislation proposed would breed and encourage, and the absolute necessity, in the interest of good administration, of limiting all public officers to authorized expenditures, constrain me to withhold my approval from this bill.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 16, 1889.
To the House of Representatives:
I return without approval House bill No. 7, entitled "An act granting a pension to Thomas B. Walsh."
This beneficiary enlisted January 1, 1864, and was discharged August 1, 1865.
He is reported absent without leave in April, 1864, and further recorded as having deserted November 24, 1864. He was restored to duty in May, 1865, by the President's proclamation.
He filed an application for pension in December, 1881, alleging that he contracted rheumatism in May, 1865.