Judge — June 1938 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

~YOU, TOO, CAN BE A CONGRESSMAN! By Robert James Malone OULD you like to get out of the rut, carn big money, become influential, enjoy travel, and attain social success? All this is within your grasp. Are you twenty-five years old, or over? If not, just wait 2 while—you'll get there. Have you been an American citizen seven years or more? No? Then why don’t you go back where you came from? Oh—you are? Well then— Many of your fellow countrymen have already found that the way to assure the presence of a chicken in the pot, two cars in the garage, and prosperity in the lap instead of some. where around the corner, is to get on the public payroll as a Representative of the People. The gates are wide open! Think of it! YOU, TOO, CAN BE A CONGRESSMAN! No previous experience is necessary. No longer is it essential to have been born in a log cabin. You don’t need a college education—you don’t need any education. Indeed, experience seems to have shown that any sort of education is a handicap. Nor do you need training. And all you have to do is go out and get your name ona ticket and then get just one more vote in your district than the other fellow, and things begin to fall in your lap. One of the first things to fall is a salary of $10,000 a year. That will be a pleasant surprise if you neglected to look into that matter beforehand. On top of that you will find that a grateful nation has provided you with a swell office, rent free. Then Congress hands you an additional $5,000 for clerk hire, so you can ring your relatives in on it, too. After all, you don’t have to be selfish about the good things in life—especially when someone else provides the good things. If the 5,000 runs out before the relatives do, you can put the excess in relatives on the public payroll in various gov- ernmental departments. This practice is called “nepotism,” but whatever it is called it keeps the money in the family. If you have had difficulty in finding yourself and develop. ing your talents, you will find that, once a Congressman, your troubles are over. You have become a Force, a Power. And, it's good fun, too! 2° It doesn’t take long to get onto things in Washington. And it’s so easy to make the headlines and get your name in the 16 papers. You just investigate somebody. Then every once in a while you get somebody to write you a speech and you have it printed in the Congressional Record and you send it, post-free, to all your constituents. That proves to them that you are on the job. You will soon realize that the secret of How to Make Friends and Influence People doesn’t lie in a book. No in- deed. It lies in appropriations. Then you will realize, too, the truth of the axiom that money doesn’t grow on trees. But you will also learn the corollary of that axiom: that it grows on a little runty shrub known as the taxpayer. And the fruit is in season whenever Congress is in Session. Some people may criticize you for “reckless spending,” but, after all, that’s only their opinion—their point of view. Generosity is one of the greatest of virtues, and what better way is there of helping people than by putting them on the public payroll or cutting them in on some government project? AYBE I have stressed too much the purely mercenary part of the Congressman’s lot. Let us look at the cul- tural side. Travel, we all know, is broadening. The Navy has long recognized that fact, but no longer is it necessary for Amer. icans to join the Navy to see the world. Congress affords many interesting trips to and from home or on a junket to the National Parks, Army posts, Naval bases, our insular possessions, or to foreign lands—and the best accommoda. tions are none too good for you, and a good time—culturally, and intellectually speaking, of course—can be had by one and all. Sometimes, when the interval between sessions is too short to permit you to make a trip home, you can pay yourself for taking a trip which you needn't take at all, but that's be- cause there is nothing stingy or small about Congress. It maz be difficult for some people to understand, but many Con. gressmen collect well over $1,200 for a trip home they didn't take, and they collect it without blushing. It’s sort of a point of view. You have to be a Congressman to get it. The Judge comicbooks.com