People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1896 — Senatorial Extravagance. [ARTICLE]

Senatorial Extravagance.

There are ninety senators. They have 353 employees to wait upon them at a cost of about $482,000 a year. That is to say, each senator, besides his salary of $5,000 a year, must have attendance costing $5,355 a year. There are 121 clerks to committees, etc., in a body numbering only ninety persons. There are fifty-two laborers, though nobody can imagine what labor they perform. There are fifteen policemen, though the senate end of the capital is fully guarded by the capitol police. Senator Chandler has rendered a public service by calling attention to this monstrous extravagance. It is an abuse of large proportions, and it is made worse by the fact that most of the money is paid to persons near to the senators themselves for purely nominal services. In other words, the senators are quartering their families and dependents upon the country at an annual expense of nearly half a million dollars to the taxpayers. The exposure ought to compel a reform.—People’s Party Paper.

Congress appears determined to divert the minds of the people—even if it has to run s bluff on every nation of the globe.