BEG FEES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12634, 23 October 1905, Page 2

BEG FEES.

What shall we do with our boys? Make them all lawyers, and persuade our friends to make theirs millionaires. Mr. Shaw, K.C., M.P., for defending the sons of Mr. Phipps, the Pittsburg millionaire, lias received £506 for his single day's work. This is quite the American rate. Two company lawyers in the United States received £100,000 between them for advising and drawing papers in a recent case. Lord Russell of Kfllowen's £3,300 for the Parnell Commission seems small by comparison. But these big fees do not come every day. Sir Edward Clarke's fees may not be as huge individually, but they total up to £60,000 a year. What, if silence be golden, is a voice which brings to its possessor as does Patti's £1200 for a~"single night's performance? Jean de Reszke commands a third of that sum in America, but only £100 per night in Paris. Calve, Eames, Melba, Nordica, and Sem'brion •receive between £200 and £400 for eachi performance in America; but one i of them has been paid as much as £50$ for a single evening at a London reception. After the law and music comes the medical faculty. Gull received £10,000 and a baronetcy for his attendance upon the King during his ter» rible illness; while the late Sir Morell Mackenzie was paid £13,000 for his efforts to save the live of the late German Emperor. Professor Adolf Lorenz was paid £15,000 fo roperating on Mr. Armour's crippled daughter. Sir James Dimsdale s ancestor received from the Court of Russia a title of nobility, and, iri all, £38,000. Curiously enough, the highest fee ever drawn was that paid to a blind doctor, Dr. Cole, of Bristol, to whom was paid £50,000 by the patient, whom, by means of electric treatment, he cured of an affection of tho knee. Meanwhile, "Miss Mary Anderson" may, if she chooses, add to her banking balance the sum of £45,000 which has been offered to her by an American impresario for one hundred readings.