Evening Star Newspaper, July 18, 1926, Page 65

FICTION AND 'HUMOR Part 5—8 Pages WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY MORNING,‘ ~ 5 Jnique Ideas to Government | Army of Letter Writers Gives BY C. MORAN. O ONE knows exactly how many hundred thousand let- ers a day are received by the Government departments In * Washington. The Dej ment of Agriculture alone gets 30, 000 t day, the Post Office Department 8,310 and fhe Interior Department an avernge of §,268. Only casual records of the flow of correspondence are kept by other de- ments. The executive offices of he Treasury Department, for ex- smple, get: about 8,000 pieces of mail & day,"the Bureau of Mines 1,000 af @ay and the Bureau of Forelgn and Domestic Commerce som¢ 600 a day. The' vadety. of correspondence covers the entire range of human knowledge from archeology "to zool- ogy.. 'But whatever ‘the correspond- ent may' ask, his letter ultimately veaches some one somewhere in the Government service who the an- swer. ' Question-and-answer newspaner wervices operating out of W depend very largely upon the G ment departments for th Many of the bureaus keep a record of socalled ‘“freak” correspondence. This includes such matters as offers to disclose the whereabouts of buried treasure, requests for lmlns of mil- lions of dollars on ° U.'s,” diets tor earthworms, requequ for instruc- tions. in : sweeping floors, adjusting l‘ii(‘ collars, paring apples and the . A correspondent asked the Secre- tary of Agricuiture recently whether the department would lend him the $240,000 that had been collected .in connection with 1918 wool profits, and for which ‘the' department had been unable to find owners. The letter ‘writer wanted the money, he said, to buy a huge area of land in the South- ‘west, which he propdsed to cut up into small farms. He averred that should the Secretary lend him the money he would repay it with 5 per cent interest “before a Democrat next sits in the White House.” The department announced, some months ago, that it had been unable to find acceptable actors among its employes to play farmer roles in the Government movies. Hundreds of re- quests have been received. from ama- teur actors, most of whom offered to work without pay for the sake of the training. The department has been compelled to turn down the. appli- .cants, inasmuch'as there are no Civil “Bervice jobs for movie actors. The Bureau of Mines became in- volved recently in g voluminous cor- respondence .with a letter writer in a Western State, who professed to know the whereabouts of a large area of un- ‘discovered copper deposits. The let- ters were businessitke in tone and composition, and the bureau experts went to considerable trouble to advise the torrespondent ' as to a proper course of conduet.. A letter of strange nature was recel then. . from tho correspondent, the \vernment perts became suspicious, muilm tigation proved ‘that the ‘letter writer was the Inmate of an asylum. “"Would you be good énough to;tsll. me whether .worms. have_ears?” one | correspondent asked .the Department of Agriculture. ‘1f'they have ears and can hear,” he sald. “I have in mind inventing a small whistle or flute and to use it on worms ltice the Pled Piper did with the rats. 1 will Sell the whistles to fishermen so that ‘when«they want to catch a bunch of worms they will simply piay a tune on the whistle and the worms will come arunning. This idea came to me ‘the other day when I had to nearly dig up (h‘ whole back yard for a few worms." s * k& THE Treasury Department has re- celved many suggestions for im- proving the strength of paper cur- rency. A correspondent wanted to know recéntly what was the system for making $5 bills. He thought that he'could make them cheaper than the United States Government, because he had “always heard that the Gov- ernment was very extravagant.” ‘He said that if the Government would let him make the bills he would be will- ing to do the work for nothing. he could make some for himself in his spare time. Agricultural lvestock breeders at a Government experiment farm at Vienna, Va., recently found a dog upon which fleas refused to remain. They ,would place some fleas on the dog, but evidently the dog was dis- tasteful to the insects, and the fleas would hop off immediately. The As- soclatéd Press carried a story of .the hhenon:,u;o:‘dlnd the department be- came dely, with eorrespondence froin dog fanciers who wanted to know the dog's antecedents. so that they, too, could produce flealess dogs. Unfortunately, however, the Govern- ment men had disposed of the dog, as' they were interested in prodncln( fleas and not dogs. Newspaper reporters complain con- tinually that Government scientists refuse to inform them of the progress of experiments. They try.to convince the sclentists that the éxperiments are public business, and that as such the pmlbl!c should bBe informed of the work. One reason why the sclentists keep their activities more or less under cover, however, is that the newspaper mention of the work re- sults in the receipt of hundreds of letters from people who want more detalls. The answering of this cor- respondence takes the sclentist's at/ tention from his experiments. Divining rods, for example, are subject that invariably . floods the Bureau of Mines with corréspondence. The Sunday Star & few months ago published an officlally luthol‘bed arti- cle on divining rods. Stuart B. ot the information. division of thc Bureau of Mines deciares that he bas received many lettérs as a result of the story, in which thé writers de- clared they. knew where there {is buried' treasure and réquested more Information ‘on divining rods. Several cases are on record: where gullible people have béen saved much money by the bureau through expos- ing the misrepresentations of fakers welling so-called divining rods or witch- ing sticks. e R 0 estimate {8 made by ‘thie public | printer as to the treméndous vol- ume of correspondence dealing with Government piblications. It is mnot unusual for 'organisations to ask for several thousand copies of a single Uulloun fep. Alstribution amongtheir wnd An mmnt has. e vy privk ns -y be flm tho prit lege of repri bulletins, provided mor Gmrmnont credit is ‘given. rsons show & marked diver- dtr interests by requesting, in a | single letter, a dozen or more bulletins that may range from agriculture to' mining. Legion also are the gng who ask for everything free that is F lfi“o‘!” ‘thlu Goyernment. : ucl 3 w‘m‘t orre- h consists of guestionnaires l:;nmetbn with surveys of m:’: X where the Qavernment Printing . Office’s ‘bu.fiubu\«l zre prepared.. -~ Ty oy un.utu. ng&rhunb 5 F%%‘*‘“‘ggf«:f{ t'g"éfl JL%“ dls:q Bringing in ow X t&efiz artwment of " Kqrieultuves 30,000 daily letters Federal .Crop. Reporting. Board ‘with regard; to crep-and lye stock’ condi- tions, 'The board has-upward of 200, 000 n‘z;rtan. ‘:mn re&m more or k-: l'“\l y -eaich mon on crops ant live stock. -A.single -widespread- in quiry by a Government bureau may | mean the' sending out of u‘mhn 50,000 questionnaires. ° mmmm ba it, but it he don't went: his wife ] 10 have ‘twins, don't #end’ the bcle ety o 7B Jaterstats Commercs. cammlt sion recetves many letters from in- | y a8 ventors who- seek to revolutionize the Mistakes filling - réquests ‘pamphiets, - as | shown by & commuhiuflnn from &n Alabama sald house ‘with a uuclt of l'°“t 3,000 Oud&‘l‘t eofiwho«. o£ Cotlon, Samples 21 Department of -Agriculture. have turned ovef the messages to the prohibition officlals to..ald them in their work. Of the 15,000 or more letters a day réceived by the Post Office Depart- ment more than 7,000, or nearly half, 80 to the Third Assistant Postmaster General, and deal mainly with the financial affairs of the department, such as money orders, stamps, regis- tered mall and postal savings. The First Assistant Postmaster Geneéral gets nearly 4,000 pleces of mall a day that has to'do with the postal service . Benerally, postmasters’ appointments, post office quarters, the motor vehicle service and the division of dead letters and dead parcel post. The Bureau of Agricultural Eco- nomics receives about 4,000 letters and packages a day of the 30;000 received by the Department of Agriculture as & whole. Of the Economics Bureau allotment about 500 are letters, and the remainder signed questionnaires in connection with agricultural sur- veys and crop reports. The bureau officials declare that a reasonably high percentage of questionnaires sent out is returned signed, but, of course, complaints are registered- occasionally by farmers and business men that they haven't the time mnecessary to answer the bureau's inquiries. A farmer returning a questionnaire recently declared that he was send- ing back the,blank “which I decline to fill out for the reason that I be- Heve that the farmers have given out . too much information in the past which has been used to further the interests of the broker and speculator as against the interests of the pro- ducer. T belleve the time will come when we farmers, like the Israelites of old, will be led out of bondage, bul it will be by one of our own neov “We have answered queries on this by the yard,” said a Kansas farmer, “and don’t see where it has done the farmer a dime's worth of good. Cut out advice, the farm blocs, and let the farmer go to work and he will be all right. I haven't time to spend half a day on your report.” Many letters are received by the bureau inquiring as to climatic and living conditions in various parts of the country. s, a Brooklyn man asked recently “whether the climate of the State of Florida would affect a man’s health should he contemplate going to that State for agricultural purposes. It is said that the average native-born citizen,” he wrote, “is a thin-looking sort of individual. Is it true that the air of Florida affecte one’s health?” %% * A T}!E Department of Agriculture, by means of educational campaigns is urging prospective farm-land own- ers to inquire of official sources the land values and agricultural possibili- ties of their proposed purchases. Most of the correspondence on this subject, however, is from persons who have been defrauded In the purchase of land, and are seeking information as to thelr course of action in trying to recover their money. The depart- ment's activities in this respect have resulted in the-dissolution of many ~ fraudulent las many cases ory chasers of the money they had Included in the Government’s Wash- ington correspondence, of course, are the letters addressed to the so-called ~ “Conscience Fund,” in whi the writers “endeavor to atone for past misdeeds either in defrauding individ uals or the Government. Interesting also is the correspondence received by the Department of Justice, giving clues to gem smugglers, the smug- gling of aliens into the United States, and the bringing in of contraband generally. An individual who is instrumental in aiding in the discovery and seizure of gems is given a percentage of the value of the goods by way, of reward. ‘There are persons, in this connection, who have made a lucrative business of traveling the ocean liners as vol- unteer detectives, their incomes:con- sisting entirely of the Government re- wards, The Bureaii of Standards is another Government organization that receives much correspondence with reference to the results of the bureau’s experi- ments. Many of the letters from indi- viduals deal with tire and other tests relating to automobiles. The bureau is asked frequently by motorists to analyze their individual car troubles. Sample materials of every conceivable kind are sent to the bureau to .be tested, but many of the requests must be refused for lack of a sufficiently |large organization to make the tests, and also because the bureau really functions primarily to test materials that are to be purchased by the Gov- ernment departments. *ox % 'HE 'Weather Bureau gets volumes of correspondence daily on' the prospective state of the weather, for the guldance of persons who contem- plate being married and who do not want the event spofled. by bad weather, of motor truck companies engaged in shipping perishable com- modities, and of farmers, seeking to arrange their planting, spraying dhd harvesting schedules. An orthardist, for example, is vitally interested in spraying with some assurance that the next day a rainstorm will not wash away the poison and thus compel him to do the job over. ‘Yoii told me & few days ago, wrote the bureau recently, “that the weather probably would be clear day, which was yes- I do not need to tell you that yesterday was one of the rainiest ntuch |days 'this’ season, and it not only | spoiled my wedding, but ruined an ex- The Income. tax- officials ‘havée’ had iinobdu share of _indi: pensive trouss€au .as well I don't pose I'can make you pay for this, I::tfl:hvab‘fllmyoun- going to rain.” Many lnqu are recelved by the Census. Bureau for statistics on birtn, marriage and death. People tfllq’l:‘n'tr-