you could find him with certainty at his office, where he was generally among the first to arrive and last to leave.

The reader need not infer that we were exempt from the annoyances, if you please to call them such, incident to the life of all officials who have the appointing power vested in them, but there was not in those days the immodest pressure brought to bear which, we are informed, is the most disagreeable feature of the public service at Washington city and elsewhere in the country.

At an early day I was required by the Secretary to address the following circular letter, enclosing a copy of rules, to the several bureau officers of the department. These rules were ever afterwards rigidly adhered to, as embodying the general regulations of the service in his department:

SIR,-I am directed by the Secretary of the Treasury to call your attention to the accompanying rules respecting the general service and the appointment of clerks in your bureau. The necessity for the prompt dispatch of the public business, and the Secretary's desire to have none but worthy and efficient employes in the department, require that these régulations be strictly enforced.

Respectfully,

REGULATIONS.

H. D. CAPERS, Chief Clerk.

First. Persons desiring appointment to office in the Treasury Department must present to the Secretary, through his Chief Clerk, their applications written in their own handwriting, stating their names, place of nativity, their present place of residence and past business experiThis must be accompanied with such references as they are enabled to give. The endorsements of well-known business men in the community in which the applicant resides are preferred to any others.

ence.

Second. The Secretary requires that a report shall be made to him on the first day of every month, setting forth the number of clerks on duty at that date, their particular assignment to duty and their efficiency; also, the additional number of clerks necessary to meet the requirements of the service in each division of your bureau, with the character of the work they are expected to perform. You will accompany this report with the nominations of such persons as may have had their ap plications referred to you from this office, or such other persons as you are led to believe are better qualified to perform the duties required than those who have formerly applied. Upon the receipt of your report

temporary commissions for six months will be issued to those you may nominate for appointment. At the expiration of this time, if it should be discovered that they are in all respects qualified as competent business men for the position of clerks in this department, permanent commissions will be issued over the signature and seal of the Secretary.

hird. In assigning clerks to duty you will keep in mind that promotions are to be made alone from among those who, by fidelity and efficiency in the discharge of duty, have fairly won the right to distinction. This is the only rule by which you will be governed in the promotion of clerks in your bureau from one class to another.

Fourth. Your attention is called to the necessity of observing the business hours as fixed by the Secretary-viz.: From 9 o'clock a. м. to 3 P. M. If the exigencies of the public service, in your judgment, should require it, you will, at your discretion, order the clerks on duty in your bureau back to their business places in the evening, to remain until the business of the day has been fully brought up. This is especially necessary in the bureaus of the Auditors and the Comptroller. While no improper haste is to be allowed, yet there must be no unnecessary delay in advancing the business of the department.

Fifth. All loitering on the part of the clerks, employes or visitors about the offices of the department is strictly forbidden during office hours. The offices of this department are considered as much places of business as the counting-rooms of merchants or bankers, and are not the places in which to entertain guests. The janitors and messengers will extend all proper courtesies to visitors, but this will in no wise extend beyond the civilities of a business establishment. Clerks or employes desiring leave of absence must apply in writing for the same to the head of the bureau in which they are serving, stating the time for which this absence is desired. If the application is approved, a copy of the leave of absence must be filed with the Chief Clerk of the bureau before the person leaves, who will at once forward the copy to this office.

Sixth. The pay-rolls of the several bureaus in this department must be approved by the Chief Clerk and filed with the Disbursing officer of the department on the 25th day of each month for inspection. All requisitions for office furniture, stationery, etc., must be made in the form prescribed, and certified to as required, by the chief of the bureau in which the same is to be used, and filed with the Disbursing officer of the department for consideration. While all the necessary conveniences for office work will be allowed, no extravagance will be permitted.

Seventh. Officers, clerks, or employes in the departments are strictly forbidden to correspond with newspapers or to furnish any information or abstract from the files or the records without special permission from the Secretary in writing. Any violation of these rules will subject the offender to prompt suspension or discharge.

An inflexible adherence to these rules and the prompt enforcement of the prescribed penalties, secured, in connection with the willing spirit of excellent officers, the most efficient service. It is likewise true that their enforcement subjected Mr. Memminger to the harsh and unmerited criticism of a class of politicians who were not disposed to consider an official as a public servant, on duty under a public trust, and who had for some reason, best known to those who had held office in Washington city, been disposed to regard appointments to office as an immunity from labor; that the treasury was a kind of public depository to be drawn on as a right of political partisanship under the guise of compensation for services rendered, and which, if rendered at all, are generally so at a cost to the government far in excess of the salaries paid at well regulated banking establishments. Mr. Memminger, very probably, took a strict business view of the matter, and was in the Treasury Department enforcing only such regulations as a business man would expect to see enforced among the representative commercial men of the country. There were not the difficulties in his way incident to the existence of rival political parties. Even if there had been, his high sense of duty and conscientious regard for the obligations he had assumed would have readily indicated this course to the Secretary

Among the few who did not hesitate in my presence to express, in unmeasured terms, their dissatisfaction with the rules of the Secretary, and especially with the rigid manner in which they were enforced, was the Assistant Secretary, Mr. Philip Clayton. Accustomed to the easy methods of the department service in Washington city, and as an Assistant Secretary there, to use his convenience in meeting the wishes of an indulgent Secretary, whose training had been with politicians or on the judicial circuits of Georgia, Mr. Clayton soon began to manifest opposition to

"restraints" and "exactions," as he termed them, of the Carolina Secretary, not alone in his remarks to the Chief Clerk, but in a form of inuendo addressed to third persons in my hearing, the evident intention being that these remarks should reach the Secretary through his confidential clerk. I do not attribute Mr. Clayton's objection to the discipline of Secretary Memminger to an indisposition on his part to discharge the duties of his office, but to an ultra democratic spirit which rebelled against all impositions of restraint. He was social in his nature and very fond of company, and never happier than when with congenial associates, he was discussing the philosophy of politics or religion, or some one of the abstract sciences. It would happen at times that some one or more of his friends would call upon the Assistant Secretary during office hours. To remind them that a social visit at that time, and at a business office, was contrary to the rules of the department was to admit that he was under the subordination of a law he had no authority to suspend at his pleasure. Hence, he was brought, through his real good nature, into a position which ultimately provoked a reprimand and alienated the official confidence of his chief. No one could have regretted this unhappy result more than myself. Mr. Clayton possessed rare intellectual endowments, to which, if there had been added more of nervous energy and the systematic habits of a business man, the Confederate Treasury Department would have had in him an invaluable officer. His wonderful mathematical intuition, by which, at apparently a glance, he could make almost any desired combination in figures, was really phenomenal. He has been known, for example, in reviewing an Auditor's report, embracing five and six columns of figures, to add the whole, page by page, by taking the columns of figures together, and to announce the result before an expert accountant could determine the

aggregate of a single column. His accuracy in figures became so well established that no one for a moment, would question the result with the endorsement of his signature to the statement. It may be readily inferred that the want of sympathy between the Secretary and his assistant would, if permitted to continue, become a source of annoyance to the Secretary and derange also the work of the department. There was no attention paid at first to the disaffection of Mr. Clayton by the Secretary, who expressed to me the hope that his assistant would yield his peculiar whims and methods when he, in common with others, was served with a copy of the department regulations. In this the Secretary was disappointed. It was not until about this time that the Secretary ignored the presence of his assistant, and would refer directly to me business matters of a confidential character which should have been properly entrusted to Mr. Clayton.

At length there was an open rupture. Mr. Clayton's friends were not strong enough in their influence, with either the President or Congress, to maintain the Assistant Secretary in his position. He resigned his office on the demand of the inflexible Secretary, and shortly thereafter issued a publication in which he made an attack upon the administration of the Secretary, which savored more of the spirit of insubordination than of either patriotism or selfcontrol.

An examination of the regulations found above, will fail to convince any one at all accustomed to the systematic order of business affairs, that there was a single exaction made which would compromise in the least particular the personal dignity of an official, or that would place a restraint upon the employe not demanded by the best interests of the public service. The opposition to the enforcement of these regulations was, in my opinion, not from a disposition on the