Mr. FESSENDEN. In the 1st place, the appropriation made last year was for last year. The approprietion proposed to be made now is for the year to come. We cannot apply the money that was up reprinted for the last year in the year to come. We have left. about 120,000 dollars. 60,000 dollars of that willbe taken up by the clause which gives S100 additional to each employee who receives less than 1,000 dollars perunnum, leaving about 60,000 dollars. The result is to make the expenditure:1 little over 200,000 dollars instead of $250,000, which was the appropriation made last year. I was informed in the Dept by the clerk who makes these calculations because they do not come immediately from the Secretary that he thought the appropriation ought to be $200,000 instead of $100,000. I told him that they must try to get along with $100,000. An objection is made to putting into the hands of the Secretary the power of raising the salaries. It is to avoid what will be necessarily an expenditure that it is put precisely in this way. If you raise the salaries, they are fixed, and they will be fixed when we come to have a different kind of currency in a year or 2 from what we have now. I thought, when I was Secretary, and the present Secretary is of the same opinion, that it is more econom ical to meet the extra expenses for 2 or 3 years by this kind of appropriation than to make a general increase of salaries, on account of the difficulty that would occur if We were to attempt to reduce them alterward. Gentlemen would be applied to by clerks precisely as they applied to my friendfrom Iowa [Mr. Kma woon] who argued the nestion just now. Clerks from a particular ‘tate will get their Sens&Reps interested in their own particular cases and those cases will affect very nearly the opinion with regard to all, and then we shall have adopted a general principle of a large expenditure, because each of us here has somebo y from our State instead oflcaviu them to their chances of advancement an their ability to render service. That is simply the argument ofit.