158 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



where the highest power was the best paid, 

 his scheme would be perfect and his argument 

 unanswerable. But, so far as I have studied 

 life, exactly the reverse is the accepted rule. 

 The things that have the highest marketable 

 value in the world, as we find it, are not the 

 things that stand highest in the intellectual or 

 moral scale. 



" One of the brightest and greatest men I 

 know in this nation, a man who, perhaps, has 

 done as much for its intellectual life as any 

 other, told me not many months ago, that he 

 had made it the rule of his life to abandon any 

 intellectual pursuit the moment it became com- 

 mercially valuable ; that others would utilize 

 what he had discovered ; that his field of work 

 was above the line of commercial values ; and 

 when he brought down the great truths of sci- 

 ence from the upper heights to the level of 

 commercial values, a thousand hands would 

 be ready to take them and make them valua- 

 ble in the markets of the world." 



(A voice : " Who was he ? ") 



Mr. Garfield: " It was Agassiz. He entered 

 upon his great career, not for the salary it gave 

 him, for that was meagre compared with the 

 pay of those in the lower walks of life ; but he 

 followed the promptings of his great nature 

 and works for the love of the truth and for 

 the instruction of mankind. Something of this 

 spirit has pervaded the lives of the great men 

 who did so much to build up and maintain our 

 republican institutions. And this spirit is, in 

 my judgment, higher and worthier than that 

 which the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Ste- 

 phens) has described. 



" To come immediately to the question be- 

 fore us, I agree with the distinguished gentle- 

 man that we should not be driven or swayed 

 by that unjust clamor that calls men thieves 

 who voted as they had the constitutional right 

 to vote, and accepted a compensation which 

 they had the legal and constitutional right to 

 take. I join in no clamor of that sort ; nor will 

 I join in any criminations against those who 

 used their right to act and vote differently 

 from myself on this subject. It is idle to waste 

 our time now in discussing the votes of the 

 last Congress in relation to the salary bill. 

 We are called upon to confront this plain, 

 practical question, ' Shall the salary bill of 

 the last Congress be repealed ? ' I shall argue 

 it on two grounds: first, the just demands of 

 public opinion ; second, the relation of this re- 

 peal to the Government and its necessities ; and 

 I shall confine my remarks to these two points. 

 I think it cannot be doubted that public opin- 

 ion plainly and clearly demands the repeal ; 

 and on a subject like this the voice of the peo- 

 ple should have more than even its usual weight. 



" When the public says to me, and to those 

 associated with me, that we have under con- 

 stitutional law given ourselves more pay than 

 that public is willing to grant us, it would be 

 indelicate and indecent in us on such a ques- 

 tion to resist that public opinion. 



" It does not compromise the manhood, the 

 independence, or the self-respect of any Rep- 

 resentative to say that he will not help to keep 

 on the statute-book a law which allows him 

 more pay than public opinion thinks he ought 

 to have. Even if he believes public opinion 

 wrong, he ought to yield to it in a matter of 

 such delicacy. 



"That is all the argument I make on the 

 score of public opinion. 



"I now come to the other point, the neces- 

 sities of the Government. Gentlemen must 

 remember that only seven years ago our ex- 

 penditures had risen to a volume that was 

 simply frightful, in view of the burdens of the 

 country. We were then paying out over the 

 counter of our Treasury $1,290,000,000 a year 

 as the cost of sustaining the Government and 

 meeting the great expenses entailed by the war. 

 What was the duty of this national Legislature ? 

 Manifestly to bring the expenditures of the Gov- 

 ernment down as rapidly as possible from the 

 high level of war to the normal level of peace. 



" If, therefore, the Forty-third Congress in- 

 tends to go forward in the work of economy 

 and retrenchment, if it has any hope of making 

 further reductions in the expenditures of thia 

 Government, we must, before undertaking to 

 carry out that work, give ourselves the moral 

 power that will result from a reduction of our 

 own pay to the old standard. As the case 

 stands to-day, our own salaries are the mas- 

 ter-key in our hands by which, and by which 

 alone, we ,can turn the machinery that will 

 bring about a further reduction of expenses 

 in the Government. 



"Mr. Speaker, I say all this on the theory 

 that we are to run the Government as our 

 fathers who made it intended it should be run 

 not on the principle of the gentleman from 

 Georgia (Mr. Stephens), a principle that would 

 make this the most expensive Government on 

 the globe, but on the old principle that there 

 is something due to the honor of the service 

 we perform." 



The bill was subsequently recommitted with 

 instructions, and on December Ifith the com- 

 mittee reported the following bill : 



A Sill (H. R. No. 793) to repeal the increase of cer- 

 tain salaries and to establish the rate of the same. 

 SECTION 1. Be it enacted, That all provisions in an 

 act entitled " An act to provide for the legislative, 

 executive, and judicial expenses of the Government 

 for the year ending June 30, 1874, and for other pur- 

 poses," approved March 3, 1873, that increase tho 

 salary or compensation of Senators, Representatives, 

 or Delegates in Congress, or of any officer or em- 

 ploye 1 , are hereby repealed, except so far as the samo 

 relate to the judges of the Supreme Court, and to the 

 President of the United States, during his present 

 term of office. . 



SEO. 2. Hereafter the compensation of Senators, 

 Representatives, and Delegates in Congress shall be 

 at the rate of $5,500 per annum ; and this shall be in 

 lieu of all allowances except the actual and necessary 

 individual traveling expenses in coming to and re- 

 turning from the national capital once each session, 

 which shall be paid to each Senator, Representative, 

 and Delegate, on the same being certified by him 



