THE UNHAPPY GOVERNMENT CLERK.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1759, 18 June 1886, Page 6

THE UNHAPPY GOVERNMENT CLERK.

A New York Mail and Express correspondent at Washington writes : — The Government clerks, especially the 2500 employed in the Treasury Department, feel that their rights are slipping away from them one by one, and that their positions are no longer the sinecures they were prior to the advent of the Democratic Administration. The first step was the abolition of the " sick leave." This was followed by a peremptory order that each clerk must be within the building at nine o'clock sharp or suffer the penalty of a reprimand from the chief clerk, to whom the watchmen at the various doors make their reports daily. A third order permits the clerks to leave the buildings during office hours only with a pass, These passes state at what time the clerk went j out, returned, and whether on private lor ocffiial business. Secretary Manning feels that the consideration heretofore extended to the clerks has been grossly abused. Although the hours of labour were from 9 to 4, it was seldom that anything was done before 10 o'clock. The clerks had a fashion of straggling in from 15 to 30 minutes late each morning, and half-an-hour was usually consumed in reading the papers and gossiping before the real business of the day began. The half hour at noon was always made to cover the full hour from 12 to 1, and work, as a rule, ceased in all tho bureaus at 3 30, at which tiuse preparations were made for starting honi9. In other words, about five hours' labour was performed each day, although the Jaw expressly provides for sever, with a brief interval at noon for luncheon. Moreover, each clerk was entitled to thirty days' vacation yearly, and 3ixty days additional were also set apart to cover absence from sickness and other causes. The " sick-leave," as these sixty days were called, was an important factor in the clerk's official life, and it was a healthy clerk indeed who failed to take advantage of it to the last moment of time. Here, in short, was a practical vacation of ninotv days each year, with full pay. When in addition to these privileges, it is remembered that the clerks had no Sunday or night work to perform; that every holiday in the calendar was religously observed, and that only half-time was required during Christmas week, the dullest intellect cannot fail to appreciate the fact that the lot of a Government clerk at Washington was certainly avery happy one.

Little girl — " And, grandfather, mother told us that if you gave us half-a-crown a-piece for a Christmas box, we were to be sure and not lose it going home," (It worked like a> charm.)