Moses Pendergrass
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Moses Pendergrass was the subject of a footnote, illustrating mistreatment by government bureaucracy, in a Mark Twain article, "Concerning the Jews", in Harper's Magazine, 1898.
According to Twain's account, in 1886 Pendergrass, of Libertyville, Missouri, put in a bid to work as a mail carrier for a year, and due to a clerical error at his local post office, his bid was accepted to work for $4 rather than the intended $400. When he discovered the mistake after the first quarter, he contacted the Post Office Department, but found he would have to pay $1459.85 damages to escape the contract. He was therefore forced to work out the year, and Congress subsequently took ten years to pass a bill granting him $379.56 as proper payment.
Twain's point, in the article's context of criticising anti-Semitism, was to show that "shabbiness and dishonesty are not the monopoly of any race or creed, but are merely human".
