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.