Not An Easy Job

The position of secretary of the treasury is ono cf work in several different lines. The word treasury, says Kato Foote in the Independent, make one think only of the millions in tho vaults. But the departments under the treasury roof are numerous. They are those of the supervising architect, the bureau of engraving and printing1 - that is where all our notes, bonds and certificates and revenue and custom stamps are printed; the secret service división - they "watch out'1 f or counterf citers and cmugglers; the office of stcamboat inr.pection, the bureau of statistics, the I f e-sa ving service, the comptroller's oilices, the cominissioncr of customs, the register' of the treasury, who is the bookkeepor of the United States, and who has to know liow every dollar of the public money i:; spent or else come to grief. Then there aro six auditors, who help the register keep his eyes ou all the claims and accounts that come to the treasury, and the treasurer of the United States, who, with his olerks, receipts and pays out money to banks and keeps thcir bonds. The comptrollor of the cuiTency has the organization of our national banks and the redemption and destruetion of notes that are worn out and defaced, as well as the issue and preparation of the national bank circulation. The commissioner of internal revenue. who attends to our internal revenue taxes and matters pertaining to distilieries, is the one whom the "moonshiners" of North Carolina swear at whon a sudden raid from some unexpected quarter is made upon their illicit distilleries of whisky. The director of tho mint attends to these little mint drops, our pold dollars, and estimates the value of the coin of foreign countries. The bureau of navigation tries to keep us from being blown up by reckless steamboat owners, who for filthy lucre would send us to sea in ill-fitting vessels. The lighthouse board tries to keep us ff the reeks ar.d shoals when %ve have gone to sea in the vessels that the inspector of steam vessels sayo are safe, and the reports of this board and tho lights they set up along our coast are very interesting subjects to a great many liundred miles of coast, both on snit water and fresh water. I am told that thcre is a iighthouse away v.p in Lake Michigan where the men r.re shut ia for six months. The weather is such that they cannot get away and the inspector says: "We invariably üad whon we go up there in tiio spring that they have quarreled and will r.ot Epeak. Ono lives on one floor and one on another r.p.d they are at loggerheads. Tho lonrj isolation is too much for human nature. They g-et frightfully tircd of each other and always quarrcl sooner or lator." The coast and geodetie survej ;iva fine maps and the marine hospital crvico has Dr. Billings at its head. Thero are fewentv-four divisions in the troa'jury, each requiring its own arrangcnients ior working its set of clerk:; and ;i head of each división who knows what he is about. It is a very perfect miichinery in spite of its complications, and the perfection of its working is shovn in the old, true story, that the accounts were found to be three cents bekind - and there was great stir and e::citement. The three cents were found at last upon the floor in one of the vaults and peace settled once more upon the boundaries of Uncle Sam within the treasury. The moral of this is that a man who is secretary of the treasury has not only a position of great responsibility, but he has it in a multiplied form. All the twenty-four divisions require a separate sort of knowledge, althöugh they flow into each other ia a great iinal.