The Quartermaster’s office is not entirely free from the official cumbersome machinery and red tape that clogs all Government branches. So efficiently does it check up upon all of its property, even to the most minute screw, that it has inspired great respect for its routine into those who borrow from its storehouse. Some years ago, one of the officers’ wives discovered the chimney of her house on fire. As she lived near the Hospital her first thought was to borrow one of the fire extinguishers. She rushed to the telephone:
“Hello! Hello! send over right away a fire extinguisher to Lieut. K’s quarters!”
“I’m sorry, madam,” replied the attendant, “I have no authority to let the fire extinguisher leave the Hospital.”
“But my house is on fire!” shrieked the angered lady! “What shall I do?”
“You had better telephone the Quartermaster, madam, and get his permission, for the Hospital holds the fire extinguisher on memorandum receipt.”
All matters that relate to the clothing, equipment, and subsistence of the cadets, including the purveying and supervision of the Cadet Mess, are under an officer of the Army detailed as Quartermaster and Commissary for the Corps of Cadets and Treasurer of the United States Military Academy.
The Government allows each cadet $600 per year and one ration per day, or commutation thereof, 40 cents per day, making a total of $746.00, but the cadet never receives in cash nor manages, his pay. The amount due him is turned over to the Treasurer, who keeps an account with each cadet in which he credits him with his monthly pay and charges him with the cost of his maintenance on a pro-rata basis plus what he has spent for clothing and supplies. The Treasurer furnishes each cadet an itemized statement of his account at the close of each settlement period so that he knows just how much money he has saved, or owes. The pay provided is ample. Cadets who are economical and take good care of their clothes, who lose no government property for which they are responsible, are able to accumulate a nice balance that is paid to them upon graduation.
In order, however, to insure that all cadets shall leave the Academy without debts, and with their initial equipment paid for, the Treasurer deposits fourteen dollars per month from the pay of each cadet. This fund is known as the Equipment Fund and totals $704 during the four years. Before graduation each cadet is required to submit a certificate to the effect, if such be the case, that all articles of an officer’s uniform ordered and received by him have been paid for; that, in case the complete outfit has not been received and paid for, he has in his possession $475 or that amount less whatever has been paid out for this purpose, which sum will be held and applied promptly to the payment of such articles of his uniform and equipment as have not yet been received and paid for; and that he has no unpaid debts contracted during the time he has been a cadet.
This provision is a very wise and beneficial one to the cadet, for he enters the Service free from the terrifying load of debt. Formerly the Equipment Fund was turned over to the graduating cadet, without any restrictions whatsoever. The consequence was that the largest part of it was spent in New York a few days after graduation, and the young officer was in debt for his uniform for many months thereafter. He started his career with a millstone around his neck, to which weight a few added that of a wife. As one experienced officer remarked, “The ladies are all right, but do not marry until you are out of debt, else every time you take a drink in the Club, you will feel as if you are swallowing the baby’s socks.”
One of the most important and difficult duties of the Treasurer is catering to eight hundred ravenous young appetites. To be a successful Mess officer for this large number requires much study, especially in this age of the high cost of supplies. The food provided is excellent in quality and well prepared. In general it is plain and wholesome, just what one would expect at a Military School, but the menu is sufficiently varied so as to please even the fastidious. Southern palates are not forced to long for fried chicken nor Eastern palates for oysters. To make the New Englander feel quite at home periodic boiled dinners gladden their gastronomic lives. Then, too, ice-cream, since the installation of an electric freezer, has become as common as the proteids.