Barton's position, though insecure, was nonetheless an unusual one for a woman. The government had very few women in its employ in 1854, and those who were hired were chiefly the widows or daughters of former employees, who kept the job in the deceased man's name. Few officials felt comfortable with the presence of women in the offices, but no firm policy had been established. Barton knew of only four other female clerks in Washington at the time of her appointment, though a year later there were at least that number working in the Patent Office alone. Her position was all the more unusual in that she was receiving a salary equal to that of the office's male clerks. Even in this favor-oriented metropolis, her job was precarious, and Mason took care to keep the situation unadvertised. During the six years she was in government service, not once was she included in the official roll sent annually to Congress.12
From nine o’clock in the morning until three in the afternoon, Barton labored with the other clerks. Her exquisitely formed and highly legible handwriting made her valuable to the office, as did her trustworthiness in confidential matters. In these first months of her employment she relished the novelty and responsibility of her position. “My situation is delightfully pleasant,” she wrote in October 1854. “There is nothing in the world connected with it to trouble me and not a single disagreeable thing to do, and no one to complain of me.”13 Her status and pay were far beyond any she had known as a schoolteacher. Following on the heels of her inequitable treatment by the Bordentown school board, the compensations of this job must have been especially gratifying.
She was easing, too, into Washington society, enjoying its personalities and eccentric social life. After walking in the golden autumn weather she wrote to her friends of the quiet confidence she felt.14 She took every opportunity to visit the Senate debates, where, from the gallery of the new red and gold Senate chamber, she came to know the faces and style of the era's great politicians: Sam Houston, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Charles Sumner were among those who particularly impressed her. She was surprised, like other young clerks, to find herself invited to numerous parties, and her early friendless condition rapidly changed. “I should be happy to see your nice collection of choise [sic] friends,” her brother told her, adding, “I think I can conceive the value you set on them for you and I value friends about alike.”15
Barton was boarding now with Joseph Fales, a fellow Patent Office worker, and his thin, jolly wife, Almira. Their companionship was light-hearted and added laughter to the satisfaction of hard work. Almira, whose exuberance especially impressed Clara, was a tall, plainly dressed woman with, as one friend noted, “few of the fashionable and stereotyped graces of manner.” She was a storyteller, a devotee of the jovial manner, gangly, abrupt, and disconcerting. Almira Fales believed strongly in the necessities of charity and pursued her private projects with a drive that matched Barton's own. Her enthusiasm and passionate devotion to her northern background would cause her to wholeheartedly embrace relief work during the Civil War—work that was to have a direct effect on Barton's own role in that conflict. But in 1854 Almira was for the most part simply an amusing personality in Barton's gallery of friends and acquaintances, providing a nice contrast to the more sophisticated and serious society of Alexander DeWitt and the Masons.16
Clara worked in this contented and ambitious spirit for nearly a year. Then, to her dismay, her “valuable ally,” Commissioner Mason, decided to resign his position and return to his home in Iowa. A difference of opinion with the secretary of the interior over internal administrative affairs was the immediate cause, but Mason was also anxious to oversee the affairs on his farm and remove his family from the heat of the Washington summer. His decision resulted in a good deal of confusion in the Patent Office and had some unfortunate consequences for Clara Barton.17
Mason left in mid-July 1855, and Samuel T. Shugert, his chief clerk, was appointed acting commissioner. Shugert was eager to please Secretary McClelland, and one of his first steps—despite his personal friendship with Clara Barton—was to consider removing the four female clerks from the office. Their presence had long annoyed McClelland, an old-line politician who considered that the women were taking jobs from deserving men who, even if not more competent, were at least voters. The sight of teapots and hoopskirts in the office irritated him; he could not see that they were only the female equivalent of the omnipresent cigars and spittoons. Barton's appointment as recording clerk was immediately dropped, and in August 1855 she was placed on the rolls as a copyist, to be paid according to the amount of work she completed each month.18 Ten cents per hundred words was the standard rate for both men and women. Even the most industrious copyist rarely made over nine hundred dollars a year. Worse yet, Shugert, though retaining their names as employees, gave the women no work to do; Barton drew no salary at all for the months of July, August, and September 1855.19 She and her colleagues were further discouraged when Shugert announced that by the end of August they must vacate the basement room in which they worked.20 Back in Iowa, Mason heard the news and was greatly saddened. “I have some grave objections if I understand the matter rightly,” he remarked. “They were some of my best clerks and besides charity dictated their appointment and retention.”21
Barton began to mobilize her partisans almost as soon as she heard of Shugert's scheme. She wrote to her cousin, Judge Ira Barton, asking for his support, and she hoped that her father's membership in the Masonic order might also aid her. After reading her lengthy explanation of the situation, her brother Stephen expressed his sympathy and assured her that she had the support of her cousin, as well as Isaac Davis, a prominent politician.22 More importantly, Barton solicited the aid of Alexander DeWitt. He too wrote to McClelland and used all the influence at his command to have her retained. “Having understood the Department had decided to remove the ladies in the Patent Office on the first of October,” DeWitt wrote to McClelland, “I have taken the liberty to address a line on behalf of Miss Clara Barton, a native of my town and district, who has been employed in the past year in the Patent Office, and I trust to the entire satisfaction of the Commissioner.” 23 But McClelland was seemingly unswayable. On September 27, 1855, he replied sharply, telling DeWitt that though he wished to help Barton, he would stop short of retaining “her, or any of the other females at work in the rooms of the Patent Office.” He allowed that they might do piecework in their own homes but balked at the “obvious impropriety in the mixing of the two sexes within the walls of a public office.” He was, he concluded, “determined to arrest the practice.”24
It was not uncommon to send work out to be done in the home, and it is probably in this capacity that Barton worked in October 1855. She collected $73.56 that month, a rate well over that of most clerks. Why she was not dismissed on October 1, as McClelland had ordered, is not altogether clear, but perhaps, if his real complaint was the proximity of the women to other office workers, he did not object to her copying outside the building. Like the other women she would walk every morning along Seventh Street, past the bustling city market, and up the stairs of the Patent Office to pick up her work and hand in completed projects. She was not allowed to stay in the offices or linger with the other clerks.25
What Barton thought of this drastic cut in pay and stature, whether she believed it preferable to dismissal or accepted it only on temporary terms while she looked for work elsewhere, has gone unrecorded, but it surely reinforced her growing objection to the unequal chances women had for earning a livelihood. She did not have long to debate the case, however, for in late October she received news that Charles Mason was returning from Iowa. The demand for his reinstatement had risen from the scientific grassroots of the nation. Inventors from all over the country sent petitions to him and to the government bemoaning the loss of his services. Bored after only a few months of the staid rural life he had previously coveted, Mason yielded. He arrived back in Washington on November 1, and with his return Barton's fortunes again rose.26
In November 1855 Barton received pay of $135, nearly double that