Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1908 — Washington Whisperings [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Washington Whisperings

Interesting Bits of News Gathered at the National Capital.

Senators Are Not as Rich as Reported

insurance is his business. Lodge claims literature as a profession, and Platt is labeled, boldly enough, “President of Express Confpany.” Warren of Wyoming Is a stock raiser, Stephenson of Wisconsin a lumberman, Elkins of West Virginia a miner, and Hansbrough of North Dakota admits to an editorship. There are 13 farmers in the house, Including J. Adam Bede; nine manufacturers, four merchants, four insurance men, seven real estate dealers and as many lumbermen. There are also seven editors. There are five journalists, four miners find three publishers. There were two planters, because John Sharpe Williams was one before he graduated to the upper house. There is one mining engineer, one railroad constructor, one fruit grower, a “trustee" (probably the only professional one in existence), a builder, an everyday contractor, one lone capitalist, a miller, a stock raiser, a surveyor and a tanner. One says his occupation is “railroad,” and another says his is “stone." There are two nurserymen and four physicians, besides Hobson, who is put down as a “naval constructor,” and Champ Clark, who keeps on trying to prove that he is a lecturer.

WASHINGTON.— What else are congressmen besides congressmen? If they are not In congress, drawing salary from a grateful people, what would they be doing for a living? When the official questioner went around and asked the Sixtieth congress what its business was when it wasn’t congresslng 56 members of the senate and lower house —15 of one and 41 of the other, replied point blank that they were “public officials.” 1 Of course, in both houses the lawyears far outnumber everybody else put together. There are 54 professed lawyers in the senate alone, and no less than 235 nfore in the house—just 11 less than an even 300 all together. In this category reads the names one has heard before —Senators Teller and Bacon, Heyburn, Borah, Hopkins, Hemenway and Beveridge, Frye, Nelson, Depew, La Follette, Foraker and Dick, Penrose, Culberson and Bailey. In the house the lawyers are legion, with Nicholas Longworth, Burton, Tawney. De Armond, Littlefield, Crumpacker, Overstreet and the New York triumvirate of Bourke Cockran, Herbert Parsons and Sereno Payne. Bankers rank next in number, although there are but five in the entire senate, which seems like news— Taliaferro of Florida, Nixon of Nevada, Kean of New Jersey, Ankeny of Washington, and Reed Smoot of Utah. The house boasts 22 bankers, making 17 in all. The two senators from South Carolina confess that they are farmers, though that is more than anybody else in the senate will admit These are Senators Latimer and Tillman. Thus the latter remains loyal to his pitchfork. Two are merchants, Aldrich and Perkins. Buckley of Connecticut says

How much are they worth in money, these lawyers and public officials and merchants and insurance men and farmers, who serve their country at Washington? Every third man in the senate is worth a million or more. There are 32 millionaires in the senate and 14 in the house. Thirty-two senators are worth, together, 1210,500,060. The 14 house millionaires are worth $83,000,000. “Retired” Senator Guggenheim is worth about $60,000,000. “Lumberman” Stephenson is worth $30,000,000. Express President Platt receives $30,000 a year in salary alone. “Merchant” Aldrich is worth $12,000,000. Do they all draw salary and every cent of perquisites they can get, these 46 millionaires who are worth the stupendous sum of $293,500,000? The answer is, they do.