It was my habit to be at the Treasury every morning at nine o'clock, and I usually sent immediately for one or more heads of division or chiefs of bureau for conference upon some matter connected with their duties. By frequent interviews I acquired such knowledge of their duties and of pending questions that I always had a reason for those interviews. By this course I maintained relations of familiarity with the officers who constituted the department for administrative purposes, and I also established a system of punctuality in the matter of attendance. When the head of a division is tardy, the clerks soon venture to follow his example, and if he is prompt they are ashamed to be dilatory unless they have an adequate excuse. The same relation exists between the bureau officers and the head of a department.
One of my first acts in the nature of a financial policy was to establish the Sinking Fund, agreeably to the act of February 25, 1862. Seven years had passed since the passage of the law and four years since the end of the war and yet nothing had been done to provide for the redemption of the public debt agreeably to the promise that had been made when the Government was a large borrower of money and when its credit was depreciated, seriously, in all the markets of the world. In my first annual report, December, 1869, I advised Congress of my action and I recommended the application of the bonds that I had then purchased, amounting to about fifty-four million dollars, to the Sinking Fund, until the deficiency then existing had been met. The step that I then took was taken in obedience to the law, and not from any great faith in the wisdom of the Sinking Fund policy, nor was it from any fear that the Government could not pay its debts whether a Sinking Fund was or was not created.
The faith of the Government had been pledged to a particular policy and I thought that the observance of that policy was both wise and just. A government cannot afford to disregard the terms of its undertakings even if a violation or neglect does not work harm to anyone. The payments to the Sinking Fund were made regularly during General Grant's administration, and the credit of the Government was thereby somewhat strengthened. The chief element of strength was in the fact that the payments were such as to astonish the heavily taxed and debt burdened States of Europe. In my four years of service as the head of the Treasury the payments on the debt reached the enormous sum of three hundred and sixty-four million dollars. No one of my successors has paid an equal amount, nor has an equal amount been paid in any other equal period of time by the United States or by any other government.