THE COSTS OF PUBLIC OFFICE
December 21, 1927
Mr. James D. Wilson
New Richmond, Indiana
My dear Mr. Wilson:
I am in receipt of your very considerate letter. . .
It is a satisfaction to hear now and then that one has the approval and support of the people who gave him his job— especially in a legislative way. . . It is so much harder to oppose money spending than it is to support it—so much more difficult to fight the creation of new boards, commissions and bureaus than it is to aid in bringing them into existence. And the crowd or lobby or whatever you call it who are fostering these expenditures always on hand during the Session to make it hot and unpleasant for anyone who opposes them, while the people who have to pay most of the bill are back home so busily engaged fighting clods, weather and pests, in order to get enough money ahead to pay these additional taxes, they haven't time to be loafing around a Legislative Session. . .
As to my being a candidate for re-election again, I doubt it, although I most sincerely appreciate your offer of support. That is what elected me—Republican support. But the truth is, as much as I like Legislative work .. . . if I continue in politics, I ought to try for an office that pays more money. I am in very moderate circumstances, financially; have a family of six children, five of them girls, and the oldest a girl ready for college next year, and you probably know what that means. Some think I was grandstanding and getting ready to run again, when I sent that $292 back to the State. But it wasn't at all. I sent it back simply because it was absolutely and unqualifiedly un- Constitutional, regardless of what our State Supreme Court says; and for the further reasons that I was elected knowing my salary would be $6 per day, that I had opposed salary increases during the term of office all my legislative career and could see no good excuse for exempting myself from that rule, and for the further reason that our agricultural interests were in such a deplorable condition they couldn't be asked to stand any salary increase—however much I needed, or would have liked to have it myself. And I hear that by reason of my having sent the excess salary back I have incurred the displeasure of a considerable number of my Democratic colleagues, who expect to try to see to it that I am not re-elected Dem. Floor Leader next Session. And so it goes. . . Most Respectfully,