April 11, 1861; Daily Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)
“Blynnks”–Who is an applicant for the Nashville Postoffice, in a letter written from Washington to the Nashville Patriot, thus show up the economy of the Federal Government:
The way the Government gets its work done is curious. As an illustration, you and your family meet in convention of the whole, and adopt a resolution authorizing the construction of a hencoop to your back yard. You at once appoint me superintendent of the work, putting a thousand or two dollars in bank for me to check on. I get you to appoint my brother-in-law chief engineer. I appoint two of my brothers assistant superintendents, and my brother-in-law appoints two of his brothers assistant engineers–all at your expense. We buy of each a fast horse and buggy, and ride around town, drink cocktails and play billiards, until the bank deposit gives out, when we make out a printed report of seventy three pages, furnishing you a complete topographical survey of your back yard, and a vast amount of statistical information with regard to the number of hens you are likely to have for the next forty years.
We wind up the report with the announcement that the site of the hencoop has been selected and a call for another appropriation to prosecute the work, which we assure you will be done with “vigor.” You place another thousand or two in bank, and we employ two hundred hands at three dollars a day to transport seventy-five cents worth of lumber, which costs you under our management about ten times that many dollars, to the place of operations, which requires about three months.
In the meantime we drive around and go on vigorously with the liquor and the billiards. We then come up with another report, and a demand for another appropriation. With this we get the walls of the structure up, and with one or two more appropriations, and a great many more cocktails and billiards, we get the thing covered in; and at the end of twelve months, which we very appropriately style our “fiscal year,” we put you in formal possession of a ten thousand dollar hencoop that any negro carpenter would have been glad to knock up some Saturday afternoon for a suit of your old clothes.