Cabinet Salaries

Until the Labor Party first made itself felt, members of Parliament served without regular government salary. A hardship to many, the rule of unsalaried M. P.'s was popular with tradition-loving Britons who felt that, come what might, Britain would always be governed by Gentlemen.*

In 1910, members of Parliament were granted a salary of -L-400 ($2,000)./- In the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin., largely a government of Gentlemen, the question of cabinet salaries was not important. To the Labor government of Ramsay MacDonald it is most important indeed. When they were in power five years ago, the Labor ministers pooled their salaries to help out the most needy among them. And last week Prime Minister MacDonald, whose first London job, at 19, earned him $2.40 a week for addressing envelopes for a bicycle touring club, announced in the Commons, in his capacity as First Lord of the Treasury, that he had increased the salary of Lord Privy Seal "Jim" Thomas, sharp-tongued onetime engine-wiper, from $10,000 to $25,000, because of extra duties as minister in charge of unemployment. Prominent Laborites agitated last week to increase also the salaries of the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, at present barely sufficient to pay the expenses of their official red brick residences on Downing Street.

In spite of the Labor ministers' justifiable complaints, most British cabinet salaries are higher than corresponding U. S. salaries, for example:

BRITAIN U. S.

Prime Minister $25,000 President $75,000 (plus $25,000 entertainment fund)

Lord High Chancellor 50,000 Vice President 15,000

Home Secretary 25,000 Secretary of the Interior 15,000

Minister of War 25,000 Secretary of War 15,000

First Lord of the Admiralty 22,500 Secretary of the Navy 15,000

Minister of Labour 10,000 Secretary of Labor 15,000

*Webster gives the following definition of a gentleman "Law, A respectable man who engages in no occupation or profession regularly for gain." British Gentlemen, like British Peers, are listed annually in Burke's Landed Gentry.

/-U. S. Senators and Representatives receive $10,000