Page:The woman in battle .djvu/535

Rh afterwards, certain persons under him in the bureau were the active agents in the swindling transactions that were going on, his plan being to avoid, as far as practicable, any palpable participation in them.

This man, however, was at the head of the ring, and was responsible for all the rascalities that occurred in connection with the important bureau with which he was connected. Without his knowledge and consent, the things I am about to relate could never have happened. What the nature of his influence with the secretary of the treasury and with prominent members of Congress was, I cannot undertake to say. It was, however, sufficient, not only to screen him from punishment, but even to secure his retention in office after his misdeeds had been exposed. The abstraction of currency and bonds for speculative purposes, and the permitting electrotypes of the plates used for printing bonds and currency, to be taken and disposed of to outside parties, for the purpose of enabling them to print bogus issues, were not his only offences. He and another official, who occupied a very prominent and responsible position in the treasury department, had several abandoned women employed under them, at large salaries, and with whom they were in the habit of carousing in their offices at midnight. Indeed, so shameless and abandoned were both the men and the women, that their doings became a public scandal, and did much to bring about an exposure of their official misdeeds. Before I knew anything of these matters, Colonel Baker pointed out these women to me as the pets of these two men, and told me about their introducing them into the treasury building, and taking them to the Canterbury saloon in male attire. This was some time before Baker commenced the investigations which created such a sensation by revealing to the public the vice and corruption that ruled in the treasury department. Baker then said he was certain that villanies of no ordinary character were going on, and that he proposed some day to try and find out what they were.

The fact that Baker had his eye on these officials, and others whom I knew were guilty of transactions, that, if the laws were properly administered, would consign them to the pen-