In such conditions it is a natural consequence that there should be a keen desire on the part of members of Congress to increase their pay and emoluments. It is an ordinary trait of human nature to magnify one's own value, and to regard one's pay as an inadequate recognition of it. Whenever opportunity exists to fix the rate of compensation for oneself by oneself, it is fixed higher than when others do the fixing. Legislators everywhere are apt to think themselves poorly requited for their labors, and the tendency to seek higher compensation is by no means confined to the American Congress. While gathering material for these lectures I came upon one issue of the London Times 1 which contained reports of three movements of the kind. In Italy a bill was proposed raising the pay of senators and deputies to $1200 a year; in Prussia, the lower house of the Diet passed a resolution in favor of the grant of free railway passes, in

the public records. In the city of Milwaukee the expenses of all city officers increased from $8280.93 in 1898 to $50,479.49 in 1908. The case of Mayor Rose is very striking. His popularity is attested by the fact that he was elected five out of six times when a candidate, but his expenses increased from $933.25 in 1898 to $5223.89 in 1908. He was defeated in 1906 when he spent $2027.10 by a candidate who spent $9207.91. It should be remembered that the expenses returned by a candidate are not necessarily all the expenses incurred by his candidacy. If his friends choose to spend money in his interest, that does not belong to the personal expenditure he is bound to state. The friendly concerts of action that obtain in high finance, and the business value of having a friend in power, might secure large expenditures without notice of it to the beneficiary so that he could make a low return with a clear conscience. When political conditions are such that power may be bought instead of earned, it certainly will be bought.

1 Weekly edition, London Times, May 14, 1909.

addition to their pay of $3.75 a day during the session; and in the British House of Commons a resolution was passed by a vote of 242 against 92 in favor of the payment of members "and for the transfer to the imperial exchequer of the financial responsibility for returning officers' expenses." The resolution simply asserted the principle, but the salary mentioned in the discussion was $1500 a year. In these cases the allowance cannot be made unless recommended by the administration, which thus must assume the responsibility for it before the electorate, and if members should attempt to force the government they could not do so without being regarded by their constituencies as bolters, and hence they would forfeit their party standing. But in the case of the American Congress, no such responsibility exists. Members of all parties can work together to help themselves, and at the same time manage to avoid responsibility. The thing may be wrapped up in some essential bill and members in ticklish districts may be provided with specious pleas to the effect that they had to submit in order to save important legislation. It is a thing which is admitted by congressional politicians to require nice handling, since if any location of responsibility can be made by the voters, there may be an upsetting upheaval. But the matter has been so astutely managed that members have raised their pay to $7500 a year together with steadily increasing perquisites in the way of personal supplies and comforts, and of patronage in their individual award.1 It is a curious circumstance that

1 Among the perquisites of a member is the right to make free distribution of 20,000 packages of vegetable and 2000 packages of

the greatest development of luxury and opulence in any legislative assembly has been attained in the American Republic. The Capitol is a large building, but not large enough to supply the personal conveniences required by members, and two new large office buildings have been erected with rich appointments.1

flower seed. The agricultural department is expected to put them up and mail them, using bundles of addressed franks provided by the member for the purpose. The Postmaster-General reports that in 1909 the expense to the government for free mail under congressional frank was $515,385. (See Congressional Record for January 29, 1910, Vol. 45, No. 32, p. 1196, etc., for a discussion of the practice.) The Nashville Banner of January 20, 1910, published the following:

Congressman Korbly, of Indiana, who recently sent nearly a carload of bags of seed to his constituents through the mails on his congressional frank, admits that he abused the franking privilege and that he opposes the continuance of such abuses; but he says that as long as they continue he intends to see that his share of government seeds are distributed. This is equivalent to saying that although he condemns the wrong he proposes to continue to do the wrong as long as the opportunity is afforded and other members do it."

1 During Senate debate on the legislative appropriation bill, March 24, 1910, a discussion arose over the employment of a professional masseur for the Senate at a yearly salary of $1800. In the course of it Senator Hale made the following statement in regard to the bath-rooms:

"It is true enough what the Senator from Nebraska has said, that while bath-rooms are luxuries and not essential to the maintenance of official life during the hours of the day that we are here, we have always had them in the Senate; and when I was a Member of the House, they had been there for years in the House wing of the Capitol building; and, as the Senator may know, there are handsome marble bath-rooms which are used when a Member sees fit to use them.

"When these two new buildings were created that feature was adopted by the committee in charge and by the superintendent,

Positions connected with the up-keep and service of the legislative buildings and offices are in the direct bestowal of members of Congress, and are parceled among the members so that they can make individual awards. To these privileges members of the minority

and we have come now to the point where it is put in black and white who they are, what they shall be paid, and how many there are of them.

"The bath-rooms are handsome, but they are not handsomer than those for the House of Representatives. They are marble; they are the best that can be made. Whether the man in charge should be a professional masseur is not a very important matter. It does not detract anything from him if he is a professional masseur, and if any Senator wants to be treated instead of being treated in his own house he can be treated there.

"The Committee on Rules and the superintendent in charge have presented to the Committee on Appropriations this list. The Senator from Nebraska is entirely right; almost all of this list the stenographers, the messengers in charge is essential. It is an immense building. Hundreds of people and thousands of people go there every day. There ought to be toilet rooms and closets and supervision, and all that. Those are essential. The bathrooms are in, and whether you will have a man in charge, as I have said, who is a professional and an educated masseur is not a matter of great importance.

"I hope the Senator from Kansas, in accordance with the suggestion of the Senator from Nebraska, instead of striking out all of the provision, if he is especially interested in limiting and making simpler the bath-room part of it, will let us deal with that; but these other things have got to be done. You cannot have a building of that kind without them. It is a favorite building. Senators go there. Almost every Senator has rooms there, and you have got to keep it up. It costs money, and somebody has got to pay the bills." Congressional Record, Vol. 45, No. 78, p. 3792.

1 Under the English system all these appointments are made by the administration through estimates submitted to Parliament for approval under rules of order which do not admit of motions for increase of the appropriations recommended.

are admitted. Some frugal members supplement their official income by appointing members of their own family to positions as clerk, messenger, or laborer. The direct connection between this patronage and the personal interests of the members is illustrated by the practice which exists of voting an extra month's pay to employees at the close of the session. Since Congress is in session only about seven months in long session years and only three months in alternate years, the service is not onerous, but extra compensation is regularly voted as a transfer to public account of liabilities that else might fall upon members individually. The following candid explanation of the practice was made by Mr. Keifer of Ohio when the matter came up at the close of the first session of the sixty-first Congress:

"The theory of the rule for the payment of a month's extra pay to employees of the House is, that as they are usually brought here for the session from distant parts, from the districts in the different States as a fair mode of distribution of the patronage, that they should be paid something on account of extra expenses. They come here now as they did long ago, and we pay them now not as much in proportion to increased cost of living as they were paid long ago. We pay them for the session only, and generally with the greatest economy they spend that salary during the session. They draw no mileage and nothing for expenses, and this rule grew up out of the idea that at the end of a session they ought to have an extra month's pay to enable them to go home. I have heard it said on the floor long ago in a Democratic House, that it was better perhaps to appropriate this extra month's pay than for the Members to contribute to pay their expenses home [laughter], and I think the rule grew up out of such a matter as that."

1

1 Congressional Record, August 4, 1909, p. 5141.