The business of the treasury department
is enormous, and no part of our government has been more faithfully
administered. Since 1789 the treasury has disbursed more than seven
billions of dollars without one serious defalcation. No man directly
interested in trade or commerce can be appointed secretary of the
treasury, and the department has almost always been managed by "men of
small incomes bred either to politics or the legal profession." [22]
[Footnote 21: Many of these details concerning the executive
departments are admirably summarized, and with more fullness
than comports with the design of the present work, in Thorpe's
_Government of the People of the United States_, pp. 183-193.]
[Footnote 22: Schouler, _Hist. of the U.S._, vol. i. p. 95.]
[Sidenote: War and navy.]
The war and navy departments need no special description here. The
former is divided into ten and the latter into eight bureaus.
The naval department, among many duties, has charge of the naval
observatory at Washington and publishes the nautical almanac.
[Sidenote: Interior.]
The department of the interior conducts a vast and various business,
as is shown by the designations of its eight bureaus, which deal with
public lands, Indian affairs, pensions, patents, education (chiefly in
the way of gathering statistics and reporting upon school affairs),
agriculture, public documents, and the census.
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