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that "Bureau Officers are doing almost nothing" and the argument for the reduction of force on that account. I find I have been used by Genl Armstrong with a different idea from that which it naturally conveys to the reader. That officer explained to me that while there is a great work yet to be accomplished and there is a necessity for fully as many Bureau officers as are now on duty. Provided that those officers are adapted to the present duty required to be performed. The officers to whom he alluded did not come under that description. During the Time when Bureau grants were held and much office work is settling disputes, taking census, registration of marriage occupied nearly the whole of an officer's time. Those who were especially fitted for office duty were willful and indispensable. Now that there is comparatively little of that description of duty required an officer to accomplish good merit visit all parts of his division with activity, be present at events, justices offices, schools and public assemblies in many directions and must further make himself acquainted with the works of freedmen at their homes. The offices to where Genl Armstrong referred and who had been efficient in the former cell duties of affairs have not adapted to and did not perform these duties, and consequently were, as he said, "doing nothing" but he did not