BACK TO GOVERNMENT SERVICE 183 



While it is a practical impossibility to accede 

 to every demand made on the executive officers 

 in this regard, it appeared to be the practice to 

 ignore even most reasonable requests. It was no 

 uncommon occurrence for an appointee to be 

 ordered to report for duty in the extreme west, 

 when his home and preference for location lay in 

 the extreme east, at the same time that another 

 man was shipped from the extreme west to take 

 office in the east. A man had no chance to make 

 a permanent home for himself and his family 

 either; at any time he might be transferred from 

 one point to another a thousand miles away. I 

 remember the case of an inspector in the post- 

 mortem division at Chicago who made every 

 effort to obtain a transfer to a southern station; 

 no attention whatever was given to his requests 

 although a number of changes were made almost 

 every month to some of the points that would 

 have been agreeable to him. In several instances 

 the men ordered to make such changes were 

 northern men who preferred to remain in the 

 north, and, although this man and others were 

 anxious to take a southern station, no attention 

 was given their desires. 



Again, I knew of many instances where 

 inspectors made requests for transfer to field 

 work, men who were exceptionally fitted for field 

 work because of their personality and their pre- 

 vious experience. Their requests were ignored, 

 while at the same time men entirely unfitted for 

 field work were constantly being sent out on 

 such work. 



