A. TREASURY Department, First Auditor's Office, November 27, 1861. SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations of this office for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1861: TREASURY DEpartment, Second Auditor's Office, November 19, 1861. SIR: I have the honor to transmit the following statement of the operations of this office for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1861, showing the number of money accounts settled, the expenditure embraced therein, the number of property accounts examined and adjusted, together with other duties pertaining to the business of the office. The number of accounts settled is 2,002, embracing an expenditure of $10,201,282 80, under the following heads of appropriations, viz: 1,791 7,149 365 Letters, accounts, &c., received, briefed, and registered.. Certificates of military service issued to Pension Office. In addition, the following statements and reports were prepared and transmitted from this office, viz: Annual statement of Indian disbursements, prepared for Congress, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1860, comprised in 450 sheets foolscap. Annual statement of the "recruiting fund," prepared for the adjutant general of the United States army. Annual statement of the "contingencies of the army," prepared, in duplicate, for the Secretary of War. Annual statement of the "contingent expenses" of this office, prepared and transmitted to the Secretary of the Treasury. Annual reports of balances on books of this office remaining for more than one and three years unaccounted, to First Comptroller of the Treasury. Quarterly reports of balances to the Second Comptroller. Annual report of the clerks and others employed in this office for the year 1860, transmitted to the Secretary of the Treasury. The bookkeeper's register shows the settlement of 1,278 ledger accounts which have been journalized and posted in the ledgers, which, as well as those for the appropriations, have been duly kept up. By reference to the monthly reports from this office made to your department since the close of the fiscal year, it will appear that there has been a constant and rapid increase of its business beyond the capacity of my present clerical force to perform, and that in some of its divisions there is an accumulation of unsettled claims. This has been unavoidable. The present clerical force in this office was intended to be and is only adequate to the prompt settlement of the current business arising under the peace establishment of the army, demanding an annual expenditure of twelve or fourteen millions of dollars. It is limited by law to one chief clerk, eleven clerks of the third class, seven of the second, and three of the first. During the Mexican war and for several succeeding years the force was increased to forty-nine clerks, and yet the business fell sadly in arrears, and the delay attendant upon the adjustment of claims and debts against the government was the occasion of great inconvenience and injustice to claimants and creditors. |