Chief among them are: An equal share in Government for every citizen. The American market for American labor. Every dollar paid by the Government, both the gold and the silver dollars of the Constitution, and their paper representatives, honest and unchanging in value and equal to every other. Better immigration laws. Better naturalization laws. No tramp, Anarchist, criminal or pauper to be let in, so that citizenship shall not be stained or polluted. Sympathy with Liberty and Republican government at home and abroad. Americanism everywhere. The flag never lowered or dishonored. No surrender in Samoa. No barbarous Queen beheading men in Hawaii. No lynching. No punishment without trial. Faith kept with the pensioner. No deserving old soldier in the poorhouse. The suppression of dram drinking and dram selling. A school at the public charge open to all the children, and free from partisan or sectarian control. No distinction of birth or religious creed in the rights of American citizenship. Devotion paramount and supreme to the country and to the flag. Clean politics. Pure administration. No lobby. Reform of old abuses. Leadership along loftier paths. Minds ever open to the sunlight and the morning, ever open to new truth and new duty as the new years bring their lessons." I ought to explain one phrase in this platform, which I have since much regretted. That is the phrase "No bar It was currently barous Queen beheading men in Hawaii.” reported in the press that the Queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani, was a semi-barbarous person, and that when Mr. Blount, Mr. Cleveland's Commissioner, proposed to restore her government and said that amnesty should be extended to all persons who had taken part in the revolution, she had said with great indignation, "What, is no one to be beheaded?" and that upon that answer Mr. Blount and Mr. Cleveland had abandoned any further purpose of using the power of the United States to bring the monarchy back again. That, so far as I knew, had never been contradicted and had obtained general belief. I ought not to have accepted the story without investigation. I learned afterward, from undoubted authority, that the Queen is an excellent Christian woman; that she has done her best to reconcile her subjects of her own race to the new order of things; that she thinks it is better for them to be under the power of the United States than under that of any other country, and that they could not have escaped being subjected to some other country if we had not taken them; and that she expended her scanty income in educating and caring for the children of the persons who were about her court who had lost their own resources by the revolution. I have taken occasion, more than once, to express, in the Senate, my respect for her, and my regret for this mistake. CHAPTER XXV OFFICIAL SALARIES WHEN I was in the House the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States were raised to ten thousand dollars a year, and a provision for a retiring pension, to be continued for life to such of them as became seventy years old, and had served ten years on the Bench, was enacted. But it is always very difficult indeed to get salaries raised, especially the salaries of Judges. That it was accomplished then was due largely to the sagacity and skill of Mr. Armstrong of Pennsylvania. He was a very sensible and excellent Representative. His service, like that of many of the best men from Pennsylvania, was too short for the public good. I had very little to do with it myself, except that I talked the matter over a good deal with Mr. Armstrong, who was a friend of mine, and heartily supported it. After I entered the Senate, however, I undertook to get through a bill for raising the salaries of the Judges of the United States District Courts. The District Judges were expected to be learned lawyers of high reputation and character, and large experience. Very important matters indeed are within the jurisdiction of the District Courts. They would have to deal with prize causes, if a war were to break out. In that case the reputation of the tribunals of the United States throughout the world would depend largely on them. They have also had to do a large part of the work of the Circuit Courts, especially since the establishment of the Circuit Courts of Appeals, as much of the time of the Circuit Judges is required in attendance there. I had great difficulty in getting the measure through. But at last I was successful in getting the salaries, which had ranged from $1,500 to $4,000 in different districts of the country, made uniform and raised to $5,000 a year. Later I made an attempt to have the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Courts of the United States increased. My desire was to have the salary of the Associate Judges fixed at $15,000, being an increase of fifty per cent., that of the Chief Justice to be $500 more. I met with great difficulty, but at last, in the winter of 1903, I succeeded in getting through a measure, which I had previously reported, which increased the salary of the Associate Judges to $12,500, and that of the Chief Justice to $13,000. The same measure increased the salaries of the District Judges from $5,000 to $6,000, and that of the Circuit Judges from $6,000 to $7,000 a year. The salary of Senators and Representatives is shamefully small. This is a great injustice, not only to members of the two Houses, but it is a great public injury, because the country cannot command the service of able men in the prime of life, unless they have already acquired large fortunes. It cannot be expected that a lawyer making from $25,000 to $50,000 a year, or a man engaged in business, whose annual income perhaps far exceeds that amount, will leave it for $5,000 a year. In that way he is compelled not only to live frugally himself, but what is more disagreeable still, to subject his household to live in the humblest style in a costly and fashionable city, into which wealthy persons are coming from all parts of the country. The members of Congress have a great many demands upon them, which they cannot resist. So a Senator or Representative with $5,000 a year, living in Washington a part of the year and at home the other part, cannot maintain his family as well as an ordinary mechanic or salaried man who gets $2,500 or $3,000 a year, and spends all his time in one place. The English aristocracy understand this pretty well. They give no salary at all to the members of their House of Commons. The result is that the poor people, the working people and people in ordinary life, cannot get persons to represent them, from their own class. That will soon be true in this country, if we do not make a change. I suppose nearly every member of either House of Congress will tell you in private that he thinks the salary ought to be raised. But the poor men will not vote for it, because they think the example will be unpopular, and the rich men do not care about it. |