Clarke the newly appointed Canal Commissioner writes his son disparaging the “mass” of job applicants besieging him seeking an “office, post or place” – after which he informs his son that he had secured appointments for his son Robert, and other relatives in the canal and engineering departments.

     “My Dear Son,

        … I am well and in good spirits but am – and has been very busy since I came here, and especially since I was appointed Canal commissioner I have been inveloped in a moving mass of importunate office hunters – and appointments are nearly all made and the crowd have pretty much dispersed. The very blind and the lame; the halt and the maimed were all ready patriotically to serve their country. Poor pitiable objects came imploringly seeking an office a post or a place, because they had “a wife and nine small children and one at her breast” The multitude attended with pretty much the same feeling of eager anxiety that is said to take place at the drawing of a lottery – each hoping that he would draw a prize. An inordinate lust for office – and an insatiable hungering and thirsting for money are at present crying evils in America. Ambition and Avarice and covetousness are predominant features in our republic. I hope my son, that you may never be left under the power of either the one or the other of those mean, wicked and deadly vices. I am getting along very well in my business. The present Board is not as well sorted as the old Board with Messrs Mitchell & McCoy in it.

        … Robert has got into business in engineering. I procured an appointment for Mr. W. Milnor Roberts as Engineer and he has taken Robert along with him as assistant I intend to assist James Moore to start a store this spring and intend putting John into it with him. I have procured situations for your uncle Wm Drips on the Rail road on the mountain; and for your uncle Wm S. McLean on the Canal, at or near Pittsburg. They both need assistance very much.

We have an immense number of applications of young men wanting stations in the engineer corps.  Robert W^ms chance of getting employment (with his taciturn disposition) would be but slender – almost hopeless, if I was not at the source of the dispensing power. Hence my commission is worth my own pay, and his pay combined, not to speak of the employment of your two uncles.  …”