Mr. POMEROY. Sir, in my opinion many of the most deserving men in the Depts and the most competent officers will be found among the 1st class clerks. Many of them have served there faithfully year after year, doing the same work and sometimes more than the 2nd and 3rd and even the 4th class clerks; and they are certainly as much entitled and even more than the other classes of clerks to this 20%. I am decidedly in favor of the 1st class clerks having something in this resolution. I have known the history of many of them, and it has been a history of neglect and even of suffering; and in the most uncomplaining manner they have year by year discharged their duties and have had no friend to intercede for them, and they will remain 1st class clerks. Many of them have been contented with that position. What I rose to say was, that if we are to give this 20%., as I think we ought to do, it is especially due to those who have in a quiet manner performed their duty as 1st class clerks without extra compensation. I do not suppose that this extra compensation has been paid where it was not deserved, as a general thing. I have entire confidence in the manner in which the fund has been administered; but I have noticed that a good many of our men last year, before the fall election, found their places so uncomfortable that they left the Depts. Some resigned; I do not know that any were turned out; but I learn that when their places came to be filled they were not filled with the same kind of men, politically, as went out. This compensation, reaching back to the 1st of July, does not relieve at all those men who left the service, either because they were requested to resign or because they thought their duties to the country were such that they could not stay. I suppose the extra compensation was distributed all right; but I have to say about it that the lower grades, called the 1st and 2nd class, commend themselves peculiarly to me; and those who have had this extra compensation, in my opinion, have not been in all instances the most deserving.