1090 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
give; and when I do that I call attention to the fact which I presented 
before—that during the last nine years and three months of his service 
as Fish Commissioner he received $55,500 as his compensation as Sec- 
retary of the Smithsonian Institution. ' 
Now, then, receiving this large amount, though it did not come from 
the Government, he was acting under the authority of an act of Con- 
gress, and at least it shows that he was not under the necessity of being 
entirely compensated and it shows how he could consent to perform 
the important services he performed for the Government without 
compensation. 
We manage here, whenever a claim of somebody is presented, to work 
up a great deal of sympathy and to value that sympathy by the amount 
we can appropriate out of the Federal Treasury. Has it occurred to 
Senators that $50,000 would give $100 apiece to five hundred poor 
families and make them feel happy? Is there no sympathy for those 
five hundred poor families that work from the rising to the setting of 
the sun, toiling to make a living? Have we forgotten here the mil- 
lions of dollars we are collecting as taxes for the purpose of furnish- 
ing the funds we appropriate for the use of the Government and for 
the use of private persons, to a large extent? 
I know, sir, and I am sorry to know it, that he who speaks as I now © 
speak is, if not regarded as a crank, regarded as a very impracticable 
man in the Senate of the United States; but I can not help it. My 
way of looking at it is that I do not represent those who seek to plun- 
der the Treasury of the United States, but I represent those who pay 
the taxes which support the Government and which ought to be 
employed in the legitimate support of the Government and the fulfill- 
ing of the obligations of the Government; and I desire to balance my _ 
sympathies between the claimants and the people who toil for the 
money that they obtain, and I expressed the other day the hope— 
Mr. Grorer. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question? 
Mr. ReaGan. Certainly. 
Mr. Grorer. What proportion of the people of Texas do not have 
- $1,200 per annum income from property, leaving out their own indi- 
vidual exertions 
Mr. Reagan. I do not suppose there is one in a hundred who has 
an income of $1,200. I doubt if there is one in-a thousand. 
Mr. Groreer. Independent of their own individual exertions 4 
Mr. Reacan. Independently of their own exertions. Mr. President, 
the question which the Senator from Mississippi asks causes me to look 
back to the people whom I in part represent upon this floor and the 
condition of the people of other States represented upon this floor, 
where there are thousands and tens of thousands of toilers that.can not 
make enough by hard labor under the existing condition of things to 
support their families in decency, and to call attention to the fact that 
