Cost of America's President

New Zealand Tablet, 13 August 1908, Page 9

Cost of America's President

President Roosevelt is-.the ruler-in-chief of America's navee. When he commands it to go-, it goeth, and when he saith to it, Come, it cometh. The President is also the temporary ruler of his people—the uncrowned king, for his term, of all the realms over which flies the banner of the Stars and Stripes. And he is, all things considered, one of the most economical heads of any State in the world. The salary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, for instance, is a year. But to this must be added the heavy expenses of running a pretty extravagant viceregal court, which a French observer (M. Paul-Dubois) has described in his L'lrlande Content poraine (Paris, 1907) as ' peupte dc snobs, de parasites, et de parvenus' (' inhabited by snobs, parasites, and parvenus '). The President of the American Republic rules over nearly twenty times as many people; but his salary amounts to only 50,000 dollars (^10,000) a year — just the half of that which is paid to the representative of the King in 'the most distressful country ' that from 1841 onwards lost at the rate of about a million inhabitants each decade. 'A million a decade! .What does it mean? A nation dying" of inner decay — A churchyard silerce where life has been— _ • The base of the pyramid crumbling away - A drift of men gone^over the sea, A drift of dead where men should be.' ♦ (Chesterfield, by the way, would rather have gone down to posterity as the Irish Lord^.Lieutenant than as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. But his dream was- never realised.) To return to our President: Besides his salary, he is also 'found. 1 And the ' finding' of him runs into the tidy little total of 64,865 dollars (.£12,973) a year. It covers private secretary, clerks, door-keepers, messengers, steward, fuel, the family bread and

butter, pork and poultry, etc., and repairs and furnishings of the plain, square briclc^box with windows in it, known as White 'House, his official residence. AIL things considered, America does not seem to pay - too dearly for its presidential whistle — especially when we compare the vast young Republic with tho Cinderella Isle, or with (say) the French .Republic,'whose President "fobs ,£24,000 a ,year, together"" with- :a- palatial" residence, % and annually for ' contingencies.'; -- ' •