This act makes it the duty of every bank organized under it, which has bonds deposited in the office of the Treasurer of the United States, once, or oftener, in each fiscal year, to examine and compare the bonds so deposited with the books of the Comptroller and the accounts of the association; and if found correct, to execute to the Treasurer a certificate setting forth that and other facts. Within this fiscal year only eleven hundred and thirty-four of the banks have caused this examination to be made, and five hundred and twenty-seven have ignored this duty, and plain provision of law. It thus appears that the number of banks that have failed to comply with the law in this regard is more than triple this year that it was last year. At this rate the law will in a few years be entirely disregarded by all the banks. As the law is a salutary one, essential to the safety of the banks as well as the treasury, it is most respectfully suggested that the law may be so amended as to compel a compliance with the provisions of the act, and a performance of the duty. A fine of fifty or a hundred dollars, to be withheld from the interest on their stocks held by the Treasurer, would force compli ance and remedy the evil. Increase during the year...... In the office at the commencement of the year.. 40 24 7 3 5 39 1 278 279 In the office at the close of the year, June 30, 1869... The amount disbursed for salaries to the above number of employés during the year was as follows, to wit: Another year's experience, and mature reflection thereon, have more fully satisfied my mind of the truth of all that I have heretofore urged in regard to the inadequacy of the pay of the employés of this office. Although the arguments urged may perhaps apply with more strength and force to an office like this, where nearly all the employés are in the daily habit of handling large amounts of money, and where the temptation to wrong-doing is much greater than in other places, and under other circumstances; yet, the same reasons for an increase of pay apply, with more or less force, to every branch of the public service. Cheap help is always the dearest. If the government desires that its business should be efficiently and honestly transacted, it must learn to pay its officers and agents at least the same compensation that is paid in private life for like services. If the compensation of government officials and employés, fixed at gold prices, many years ago, was none too much, when all the necessaries of life were cheap, then the same nominal salaries, payable in a depreciated currency, with the cost of all the articles that enter into the consumption of a family increased to at least double the price that obtained when the salaries were fixed, are evidently and most certainly inadequate. Congress has felt the force of this in its own case. Before the year 1856 the pay of a member of either house was but eight dollars per day, for the time that Congress was actually in session. I have looked over the journals, from the foundation of the government to the year above named, in which year the salary was increased to three thousand dollars per annum, and find, that for the whole of this period, embracing a term of sixty-six years, the salary of a member of Congress, exclusive of mileage, averaged less than twelve hundred and fifty-three dollars per annum. The members of the thirty-third Congress, in 1853, 54, and '55, received thirteen hundred and forty-four dollars per annum; being the pay of a grade between a first and a second class clerkship in the government offices. During the rebellion, when money became cheap and everything else dear, Congress increased the pay of its members from three to five thousand dollars per annum. It is very doubtful whether the pay of a member of Congress is not still too low. Men fit for such a station can command much better compensation in the business and professional walks of private life. But, if this compensation for persons whose official services are required for but about one-half of the year is but enough, or not enough, then what can be said in favor of continuing the compensation of other government officials, whose whole time is required, from one year's end to the other, at prices ranging from less than one-quarter to rarely one-half those received by members of Congress? It is notorious, in some of the States, that public places, and especially legislative offices, are sought for and held by the unworthy, not for the salaries pertaining thereto, but for what can in some way be made outside of the pay fixed by law. All this will surely be rectified, when the people shall come to know that the masses, who are poor and honest, are disfranchised and made ineligible by reason of this false economy, and that the effect is to place political power exclusively in the keeping of rich men or in the hands of rascals. The masses of the people will finally learn that political offices are often taken, not for the public good, nor yet for the paltry salaries that pertain thereto, but by rich men to look after their own interests, or by knaves for the "stealings" that they hope they may thereby secure and pocket. The salaries of employés of offices like this should be large enough to command the best talents, and should at least be ample to give them and their families a decent livelihood, and thus remove them from, and place them above, the temptation to do wrong, so that they and their families may live. The risks of loss, and the pecuniary responsibilities, of the employés of this office, are very great; and the temptations, with money lying loose all around them, and their families just inside of starvation, are still greater. Were it not for the fact that this office is considered a sort of stepping stone, and a school from which young men may graduate, and become tellers, cashiers, and bankers, it would be next to impossible to procure the services of persons of the requisite honesty, competency, and industry to execute the responsible duties pertaining to it. It now turns out that when a young man becomes sufficiently educated to be really useful to the government, he seeks and obtains a more lucrative situation elsewhere. And so the government loses the talent and skill that it took so much pains to create. The rule should be reversed. When men have become prominent in private life, for integrity, talents, competency, and industry, in counting-houses and banks, the government should be able, by the salaries that it would offer to persons with such qualifications, to draw them into the public service. Banks and business firms, the country over, pay salaries double, and more than double, those paid by the government for like services. Until this evil is corrected, and the government becomes willing to pay a price that will bring the right men into the right places, there can be little hope for an efficient and an honest administration of public affairs. Lately the accomplished cashier of this office has resigned, and has established a banking-house in this city. The inadequacy of the pay fixed for the office drove him out of it. The salary of this officer, and that of the assistant treasurer as well, is fixed by law at only twenty-eight hundred dollars per annum. The services of persons possessing the requisite qualifications for these offices will readily command twice, and three times, this amount from banks and other moneyed institutions. In order to obtain the services of a person to fill the place of cashier, who was known to have all the necessary requirements, because he had heretofore been the assistant cashier in this office, it became necessary to offer him the same pay that he was receiving as assistant cashier of a national bank at Omaha. This was largely in excess of that fixed by law for the cashier of the treasury of the United States. Luckily there was an appropriation out of which the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to make the extra allowance that was required to put the cashier of the treasury of the United States on a par with an assistant cashier of a bank in the interior of the country; and in this way his services were with difficulty secured. The Treasurer of the United States receives six thousand five hundred dollars per annum; the assistant treasurer at New York, eight thousand dollars; the assistant treasurer at San Francisco, six thousand dollars; and the assistant treasurers at Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and New Orleans each, receive five thousand dollars per annum. It would be difficult to find a good reason why the assistant treasurer at Washington should be paid only a trifle over half as much as is paid officers of like grade, and with no more onerous duties, nor greater responsibilities, living in the cities of Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, or New Orleans. The assistant cashier of the treasury is paid but twenty-five hun dred dollars, a sum, for the duties performed and the risks incurred, in my opinion entirely inadequate. The chiefs of divisions, who have more in charge than heads of bureaus had in former years; the tellers and the principal bookkeepers, receive but twenty-two hundred dollars; and the assistant tellers and. the chief clerk of the Treasury of the United States receive but two thousand dollars per annum. All these salaries, and those of the various classes of clerks, are found to be inadequate to obtain the services of persons fitted for the various places, and equally so to retain them, when they shall have been educated, at the government expense, to obtain better pay elsewhere. With the female clerks the case is a little different. Nearly all other avenues to obtain an honorable livelihood being closed against their sex, they flock to Washington to seek employment as clerks in the various departments of the government. So there is little difficulty in procuring the services of any number of female clerks that may be required, and that, too, at the present uniform rate of compensation. But many who are now employed in this office in the handling of money have, by long practice and close application, become experts, and do as good, and in many cases better, official service than malé clerks who receive double their compensation. All the coupons, and all mutilated United States notes and fractional currency, are assorted, counted, and prepared for destruction by female clerks. This requires great care and patient labor, and subjects these clerks to great responsibilities and risks, and not unfrequently to pecuniary losses. It frequently happens that a lady engaged in the counting of money loses more than half her month's salary by reason of having lost money, or having overlooked and passed over counterfeit notes. No one, who is at all acquainted with the business operations of this office, will gainsay the fact that many female clerks, receiving only nine hundred dollars per annum, can do, and do do, more work of the kind mentioned, and do it better, too, than any clerk in the department, receiving double their salary, possibly can. On coupons the experiment has lately been thoroughly tried and tested. It was found that the work done by females was done much better, and more was done in a given time, than had been done by the male clerks who receive the larger salaries. In order to test the difference between the two kinds of clerks, on this kind of work, more thoroughly, the female clerks were required to review and recount the work of the male clerks; and it was found that they not only corrected errors in the count, but that they detected counterfeits that had not before been discovered, or known to any person connected with the Treasury Department in this city or elsewhere, and that had been overlooked by the male clerks in the offices where they were originally received, and by those in this office, who had counted them. But for the timely discovery of these counterfeit coupons, the government would have suffered great loss. It has been remarked here, all along, that the remittances of mutilated currency to this office from the office in Philadelphia are better prepared, more neatly done up, with less mistakes in count, and containing less counterfeits, than those from any other office. The reason is that that office employs female clerks, and it is the only one except this, connected with the Treasury, that does. The female clerks in the Philadelphia office receive but six hundred dollars per annum, for work that is better done than that done by clerks in other offices who receive from double to treble the amount of salaries. For such clerks simple justice is demanded. It is not even asked that because they do more work and do it better than male clerks can, they should receive like pay. For it is believed that, should this be done for them, men, who have votes, would, to a degree, qualify themselves for such work and thrust them out of their places, and out of employment entirely. But it is asked, that they should be classified according to their merits, and the labor they are able to perform, in the same manner but at salaries below those of the male clerks; but high enough to stimulate the ambition of the lower classes to qualify themselves for the duties pertaining to the higher classes. I desire to call attention to what has been said on this subject in former reports, and to reiterate all that was said therein. In accordance with these views, the following table of the officers, clerks, and other employés of this office, with the pay that should, in my opinion, attach to each, is most respectfully submitted: Chief of division of correspondence, and ex-officio chief clerk 3,000 00 3,000 00 Assistant paying teller 2,500 00 2,500 00 2,500 00 2,200 00 2,000 00 1,800 00 1,600 00 1,400 00 1,200 00 1,200 00 1,000 00 900 00 Assistaut receiving teller. Assistant principal bookkeeper 9 messengers, each 9 assistant messengers, each.. 8 porters, each ... 15 fifth class female clerks, each.. 15 fourth class female clerks, each.. 8 female assistant messengers, each 800 00 1,200 00 1,000 00 900 00 800 00 700 00 700 00 600 00 400 00 The aggregate pay of the female clerks, as above classified, will be the same, for the number asked for, as is now paid; the average being just nine hundred dollars each per annum. The classification of the clerks in the foregoing plan is in accordance with that recognized by law. It is, however, suggested that the order of precedence should be changed so that the first class of both the male clerks and the female clerks would be highest in rank and receive the highest pay. The gradation should be made to go downward, instead of upward as now. The number of employés, as above, is much less than the number that are now necessarily employed in the office; and for years in the future, as in the past, more help will be required than contemplated by the plan presented. Such can continue to be temporarily employed, from time to time, as the exigencies of the public service may require. |