Pegler: Nepotism
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
The wife of one of the Republican governors at Tom Dewey’s St. Louis seminar ran loose at the lip with a suggestion that any statesman’s loving little treasure who wouldn’t help her old man with his letters, without public pay, ought to get a divorce. She was talking about Mrs. Harry Truman, who has been drawing $4,000 a year from the government for such work.
Deplorable as it is for its nastiness, this remark might do some good, nevertheless. For one thing, it should embolden other husbands in the campaign, on both sides, to call up their manhood and issue orders as to who is to do the talking and who is to keep quiet.
Not all husbands face this problem of marital discipline and none could hope to carry the burden of political blame for meddlesome statements that President Roosevelt has borne so lightly for twelve years. But Mrs. Roosevelt is a unique and special case. She has advertised and endorsed shows and books and Communist persons and projects, called her husband the “ruler” of the American people, given aid and comfort to rackets and racketeers and journeyed far at public expense in the hitherto non-political and almost holy habit of the Red Cross.
Bad practice
But this extra emphasis on the Trumans arrangement for the collection of some petty white graft may be salutary in another way, too. It calls attention to a snide and disreputable practice which the members of both houses of Congress have resorted to as a pathetic compromise between decent dignity and the necessities of their economic condition.
Although Congress is supposed to be the master of its problems, any proposal and every vote to raise their salaries to a fair level would be unfairly condemned as a self-serving act. Only a lame duck or a man determined to retire could take responsibility for such a bill and those who voted for it would be hammered in their home districts for unconscionable greed even though it were designed to take effect at a future session.
Congressman’s pay of $10,000 should be raised to $25,000 at once.
He runs for office every two years. The campaign expense varies but is, on the average, $1,000 a year. It may be more if he has to stand a primary contest and some rivals run in primaries with no hope of winning but only to cause the incumbent expense. In presidential years, some of them get help from their national organizations, but this is not necessarily generous and is never reliable.
The statesman gets 20 cents a mile to and from a session but many of them make four or five trips a year to their home districts and none of this political expense is deductible in their income tax returns. Neither is the expense of living in Washington for 200 or more days a year which, with unavoidable touches and the cost of entertaining, will be about $3,000, although salesmen, executives and the like may charge off such amounts. Meanwhile, he maintains a real home in his district where he must be a substantial citizen and, nowadays, the sessions are so long that his private law practice or other business wanes or dies of neglect.
In granting the raise, the people, in effect, would be subsidizing the political expenses of their servants. That sounds worse than it is, and anyway, the people are doing it now and, as for the hold-the-line order and the Little Steel formula, it should be remembered that practically all labor is receiving inflationary pay. Sidney Hillman recently got a raise of $3,000 a year from his clothing workers at a convention attended and addressed, of course, by Mrs. Roosevelt. The reason public opinion condones this nepotism is that we all know the expenses of the position and the price levels of the time call for. The people, in this case, are in no position to pull snoots at the Trumans.