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 the employés belonging 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.