Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-04-15
OUR RULERS PALACE.
The Cramped Quarters of the Execu-
tive Mansion Allows
NO PRIVACY FOR TIE PRESIDENT.
A Salary Of $4,000 Year Enough With
out Free Quarters.
pEPTINENT PESnI UTIlNS pPnpncEn
NO PRIVACY FOR THE PRESIDENT.
PERTINENT RESOLUTIONS PROPOSED

the housing of the President and his fam
lily. If we must have Presidents we should
give them a chance to live decently, with
space enough for the household made neces-
sary by the demands of the station, and
with privacy at those times when privacy is
their right. No married couple in America
who values domestic quiet would from
choice live as the President is forced to live,
with no more space than is to be had in
many a house Of the city which can be
rented for $40 month, and with a feeling
that somebody outside of the family is al
ways tramping through the other rooms.
To one who has witnessed, as 1 have dur
ing the last few weeks, the awful pursuit OF
the President by Office seekers, the lack of
privacy day or night, the impudence with
which some men press their demands while
their victim is eating or sleeping, 1t must
seem that however cynical one may be IN
regard to the necessity and sense of all this
machinery of government, one must be
hard hearted indeed to fail in sympathy for
the man who is growing more haggard and
worn each day of his life.
THE sPECTER OFFICE SEEKERS.
1t seems to me that the haunting specter
of some one always waiting in the lobby
must be almost enough of itself to throw the
strongest man into a condition of nervous
prostration.
Not to 60 into long discussion of an old
question, it must appear to every one that
the country should not treat the President
more meanly than others of its employees
They should not compel him to live in one
end of business block after the fashion of
the economical keeper of lager beer saloon.
They should trampie on precedent instead
of on the President, and permit the highest
ranking servant of the people to do as the
member of the lowest grade, and that is to
hire mis- own private house and pay Tor 1t
out of his own pocket, like other people.
can see no more reason why President
should be furnished house to live in than
Vice President, a member of the Cabinet
or any other employe of the Government
He gets bigger salary than anybody else
and the necessary entertainments which he
gives during his term makes no greater
draught on his purse than on the pockets
of the others. These entertainments are
pretty generally provided for in the eontin-
gent fund for the maintenance of the Exec
utive, and need not to any serious extent
come out of his salary.
A MoNARCHIcAL IDEA.
He is not compelled to live in the execu-
tive mansion except by precedent and as
precedent is easily gotten rid of in a coun-
try only 100 years old, that should not
stand in the way of a sensible President
who really desires to have privacy when he
is not in attendance on his public duties.
Moreover, it seems to me that it is prece-
dent which would be more honored in the
breach than in the observance. Like the
Presidency itself, it is a relic of the monar-
chical idea.
The fathers of the republic could not di-
vest themselves of the conviction that there
must be some one person to sit like a king
as a court of last resort upon the action of
those representatives coming most directly
from the people, just as the Senate was
thought necessary as a sort of house of
lords. And so, also, the palace was
thought the proper thing for the housing of
the President, as the castle for the king. Of
course it NAV be said that there is no differ
ence in fact between paying a public
servant salary with which he rents
house and renting the house for him, or
building him one in which he may live rent
free, but if so, why not do as much for
every public servant? In this democratic
country why should distinction. be made
in favor of the President, who is no less
servant and no more q ruler than the most
obscure employe of the departments?
A SERVANT, NOT A RULER.
We compel the Vice President, members
of the Cabinet, Senators, and members of
the House of Representatives to live on sal
aries ranging from IS, 900 to $1,000 a year
and rent their own houses. By living mod
estly and attending strictly to the business
for which they are sent to the capital they
can pay their expenses and have something
left. If they ''put on STYLE" and entertain
handsomely, giving expensive dinners, of
course they will find themselves out of
pocket at the end of the year. But if they
please to do that it is their own affair and
they should pay for the pleasure out of their
private means. They are not paid for Civ
ing champagne dinners
But here is the President, mere execu-
tor of the laws, not by any means as i'm
portant an individual as the man who
makes the laws, under the operation of this
anomaly of a democracy of ours, getting
salary of S5O, 900 year, and house to live
in, and Presidents and tuft hunters and
sticklers for show and grandeur and ''the
dignity of the Government" demand that
be shall be made more of king than he is
now by building a new and magnificent
palace for his private use, where he NAV en-
told himself more than now in the egotism
of power and exclusiveness, and fancy him
self more and more q ruler instead of SER
want,
LET Us RESOLVE.
While, therefore, we may sympathize
with the President in the impossi0ility of
privacy which he now suffers, let us not
maudle over it nor become afflicted with the
idea that the country is humiIiated by the
fact that he is cooped up in one end of the
public building where the executive bust
ness of the Government is conducted. Let
us rid ourselves of all idea of snobbery and
become pure and simple democrats as we
ought to be in this democratic country, and
solve the question of the Presidents resi-
dence and privacy by demanding that our
representatives in Congress introduce some
thing like the following:
WHEREAS, The limited space of the build
ing which is intended for the transaction of the
executive business of the United States is
found insufficient in size for the growing neces-
sites of the Government, while it is also occu-
pied as the private residence of the chief exec
utive therefore be it
Resolved, That on and after the 4th of March,
1892 this building shall be devoted solely to
executive affairs.
BUYING HIS OWN PRIVACY.
This will give the next President of the
the United States the proud privilege of
renting or buying his own residence, in
which he could surround himself with such
rules as would ensure reasonable privacy,
and not be constantly subjectto the humilia-
ton of the consciousness that he is sponging
on the people for the root that is over his
head while accepting salary which in his
private business he could not by any means
honestly earn.
A President who lives modestly, yet lib