Life — August 7, 1913 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

a AUGUST 7, 1913 “While there is Life there’s Hope” VOL. 62 No. 1606 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mitcuets, Pres’t. . Mintir, Sec’y and Treas. West Thirty-first Street, New York 17 English Offices, Cannon House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. IGENAZ OR BRIS- TOW’S resolution asking the Pres- ident to advise the Senate what salary was necessary to keep Mr. Bryan steadily on his job was tabled, of course, being only a piece of impudence, and not a bona fide effort to get Mr. Bryan's pay raised. But some of the discourse attending it was inter- esting. Senator Bristow started out to be funny and suddenly found himself the butt of his own joke, the Senate being much readier to have fun with him than with the Chautauquaed — Seeretary. Senator Townsend of lichizgan thought that the public announcement by Mr. Bryan that a man of his well-adver- tised Democratic tastes cannot live on an income of $12,000 a year presents a moral question for the consideration of the American people, the said ques- tion being whether, under the circum- stances, it is the duty of the citizen and the public servant to modify his style of living to bring it within his legitimate income, or whether it is his privilege to resell his services in order to cover the cost of the style of living he has adopted, This moral question did not get much discussion, It would be inter- esting to know whether such men as Senator Townsend are really as dense as they would appear about the social obligations of such a post as Mr. Bryan fills, and the cost of them. Of course twelve thousand dollars a year is a lot of money. A man and his wife can live on it comfortably at the best hotel in Washington and Have something over. Or they can keep house simply with about two women servants, or perhaps three, and not be pinched if they do not attempt to have much company. What costs money is not the provision of personal main- tenance, but the sort of apparatus that makes hospitalities possible. Prob- ably the Senator Townsends never go in for hospitality and know nothing about it. They don’t know, for ex- ample, that the real burden of filling an underpaid great office falls not so much on the man who fills it, as on his wife. They do not know that the pinch of being Secretary of State on twelve thousand a year falls chiefly on Mrs. Bryan, an admirable woman, rot much used to the duties of such a place, and who must be burdened and racked with the entirely unnecessary and senseless strain of trying to meet them with a ridiculously insufficient income. HE wife of a new President valks into an establishment in running order, with a good deal of experienced service provided and a fairly ample provision of money to buy more. She has a fair chance to adjust herself to new duties, and to give her mind to people and discourse. The wife of the Secretary of State, who is bound to show many civilities and to return many hospitalities, and to maintain. a good deal the traditions of a high place, has first to go house-hunting, and then to maintain her establishment on a ridiculously insufficient official in- come. No wonder it was in the papers last spring that Mrs. Bryan was spending a week at a rest-cure. No wonder Mrs. Taft came to the White House broken in health after a long service as the wife of an underpaid high officer of our government. The Townsends of Michigan and Bristows of Kansas seem perfectly willing that the burdens that the national treasury should meet shall be left to crash down on the overstrained nerves of women, What is Mrs. Bryan's prob- lem in Washington is Mrs. Page’s problem in London, We never hear anything in Congress about the woman’s end of the job of being Am- bassador in London. It is not adver- tised. But it is half the job and often it is the big end of it, and it cannot be handled without a fairly generous provision of money. T is to lighten the excessive strain of official life for Mrs, Bryan that Congress should provide a house and doubled pay of the Sccretary of State, and it is to lighten the exces- sive strain of official life for Mrs. Page and her successors in London that Congress should provide a house and doubled pay for our Ambassador there. These contemptible and futile economies which our hayseed legisla- tors have so long practiced in these concerns are cconomies enforced at the cost of women; of women set to make bricks without straw; to fill great places without the incomes prop- er to them, A Secretary of State ought not to comicbooks.com