The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-09-07
WASHINGTON LETTER.
LFrom on RegnIar Correspondent. !

W ASHINGrON, ID. u, sept. u, 1888.
In round numbers there are 10000 |
Office holders dependent for their bread
and Oleomargarine upon the treasury of
the United States, and who receive salaries !
ranging from S15 per month to $50 600 |
per annum, the compensation for the
president. SO much has been said con !
corning the extravagant salaries paid to
our higher government officials, in con
neCtiOn with the civil service reform dis
cussions, few comparisons between the
salaries paid in this country and those
paid TO officials in similar stations in
England may be of general interest, For
instance, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge,
now visiting this country, receives a sal
airy twice as large as the president of our
tifty-fve millions of people, and nearly
ten times larger than that received by the
chief justice Of the United States The
lord mayor of London and the lord lieu
tenant of Ireland each receive salary
larger by $4,000 per year than that re-
pay our ministers to London and Paris
and Berlin ST., 800 per aunum, and con
slider that the very exaltation of extrava-
gance the ambassadors accredited to this
country from those nations receive nearly,
if not quite, three fold more than we pay,
and the Russian minister receives more
than four fold the extravagant figure that
has kept us in a grumble for thirty years.
To our second class ministers, such as
represent US at Madrid and Vienna and
Rome, we pay $4,000 per annum, while
England pays to her representatives to
those countries $27, 900
There is yet another class of ministers
to whom we pay salary of $4,000 such
as those who represent us in the South
American states and England makes no
distinction between them and the Aus
TRAN and Italian missions so far as com
pensatiOn is concerned. And so it is with
our cousuls and our secretaries of legisla-
ton and other attaches, to whom we pay
the maximum salary of $1,000, and
England perpetuates hers through life
time by giving them just double that
sum. We pay our cabinet officers So 900
per annum, which is just about the
amount the English premier receives per
month, and the comptroller of the treas
ury works for the same amount, $4,000,
per year, that the chancellor of the Eng
fish exahequer receives per month. The
postmaster at New York gets rs, 1000 per
annum, and his confrere t.sLondon gets
as many pounds, or nearlyAflve times as
much; while the same officer at Liverpool,
Manchester, and dozen other English
cities, receive more than double the com
pensatiOn of the postmaster of our me.
tropolis The general of the army gets
$13, 500 per year, which would scarcely
considered pin money foL the head of the
British army, nor would the admiral of
the English navy be able to keep up the
dignity of his position upon such pit
lance as the $1,000 per year that we
dole out TO the head OF onr powerful sea
forc(A,
With most of the officials to whom we
pay what we are prone to consider extra
VACANT salaries, there is absolute struggle
for existence, because of the demands up
ON them, for inequalities, offlcia! cour--
tesies, and all that sort of thing. In fact
many of them, and particularly the cabi-.
net officers, expend much more than the
salaries they receive every year in respon-
ding to these social requirements. None
of them, not even the President, is ex-
pected to lay by anything for a rainy day
out of these salaries, and we know with
what pitifuld isdain the whole American
people look upon recently retired Pres
ident, who is suspected to have so econo-
mixed in the household expenses of the
executive mansion as to salt down about
one-half of his entire salary. There is of
course, no good reason why we of this
plain democratic, modern republic should
especially emulate aristocratic andwealthy
England in the matter of official salaries,
no matter how powerful Or well able we