THE $64 QUESTION

...Doubtless, the proposal of such a law in Congress would raise an immediate howl about the sacredness of personal financial affairs...

...Only a newspaper reporter is likely to give you the answer offhand...

...The lists would be open to public inspection...

...Many a government administrator has been forced out of office by disclosure that he was dealing with matters in which he had a personal interest and hence not dealing with them strictly in the public interest...

...Whom do you want in the White House...

...If Congressman Y, who backs all anti-labor bills, is a heavy investor in industrial concerns employing large bodies of workers, the public ought to know it...

...The $64 Question By FRED RODELL TRY IT FOR FUN as a brain-twister on any one of your friends: What is that fact about the average prominent man, the man in the public eye, which he invariably tries to keep secret from his fellow-citizens...

...Some years ago when the Justices of the Supreme Court ruled that they, as Justices, did not have to pav income taxes on their salaries, popular skepticism helped lead to a change in the written law and, eventually, to a new decision...

...Is it of no concern to the country at large to know that Congressman K's $10,000-a-year for serving his constituents adds only a drop to the bucket of his investment income, or that Judge J's lifetime salary is of far less financial interest to him than the dividends he receives from General Motors or from Standard Oil...

...These lists would have to be revised annually...

...But there is one question he almost never asks...

...Now, except from the broad social viewpoint that it is a bad idea to let a nation's wealth be too unevenly distributed—and that the unwelcome publication of the riches of the very rich might therefore be a healthy gesture—there is no particular reason why the fat cats of business and industry should not be allowed to keep right on hiding the sizes of their fortunes behind a wall of silence...

...Senator, Mr...

...What is your yearly take...

...James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," used to harp on this string long before Marx was born as did other serious students of government long before James Madison was born...

...What are you worth...

...Well, Mr...

...And the public's only protection against the abuse of this tendency is popular disapproval, which in turn must be based on popular knowledge of the facts...

...Ask a Senator or a bank president or a judge—and then duck...

...Justice, Mr...

...He is used to asking people, from presidents, princes, and business bigwigs on down, every sort of question under the sun— ranging from opinions on important world affairs to intimate details of family life...

...In a sense, this fact is inevitable...

...Where did you meet your wife...

...Once a man's income climbs close to the $100,000-a-year level, the little fellows down around $2,500 stop admiring and begin to raise their eyebrows...

...If Senator X, who regularly votes to relax government regulations of utilities and against public power projects, owns a pile of stock in private utilities, the public ought to know it...

...Yet, day after day, in the course of government affairs, votes are cast and judicial and executive decisions are made by men who have a large personal stake in the outcome—not as legislators, not as judges, not as administrators of laws directly affecting their own businesses, but simply as men whose broad financial interests will be either helped or hurt by a Yes or a No...

...Secrets Of Public Servants This sacred hush-hushability which surrounds the financial affairs of important individuals has been so taken for granted for so long a time that most folk probably regard it as entirely natural and proper...

...Open To Public Inspection A simple law would do it...

...they pay income taxes today...

...And on the rare occasions when he does, he is given at best an evasive answer—if he is not told flatly to go mind his own business...

...But it is neither inevitable nor sensible that these men should be permitted to conceal from the general public those facts about their own financial affairs which cannot but influence some of their important judgments...

...And the public ought to know exactly the same things about every administrator, every commissioner, every important figure—from the President and the Cabinet on down—in the executive branch of the Government too...

...In fact, most of our private charitable and educational institutions were founded, and are still supported, by the anxiety of millionaires to keep in the good graces of their fellow-citizens—and of their own consciences—despite being millionaires...

...Where does it come from...

...It would be interesting right at the start, to notice from what quarters and from what individuals the howl came...

...What do you eat for breakfast...

...What do you think of Russia...

...If Judge Z, who always seems to find something illegal about new taxes imposed on business, is an independently wealthy man with large business holdings in the form of securities, the public ought to know it...

...Success, as measured in dollars, may be an accepted American virtue—but only up to a point...

...It is simply one of the facts of political life that no man, short of a semi-saint, can avoid or ignore the tug of self-interest, provided the interest is large enough...

...Are we not entitled to be told a little something about their private sources of wealth...

...It would not seem too unfair to suppose that those who did the howling would be those who were either scared or ashamed to divulge the size of their own incomes or the extent of their own holdings...

...Of course, the real reason why the man who has risen pretty high in the world insists on guarding so jealously the facts of his financial status is that he is just a touch ashamed of them...

...Congressman, Mr...

...What is your income...

...To prevent easy evasion, they would have to include the holdings and incomes of wives and minor children, and the facts about such legal devices as trusts whereby men continue to control property although they are no longer, technically, the "owners...

...Secretary, and all the rest: What is your income...

...The light of publicity might not change many decisions, but at the very least it would lead each official to think twice and think hard before taking any step in the name of the government which would redound to the official's own benefit—and redound in a manner for all to see...

...And if a majority Of either House of Congress should refuse to pass such a law, once proposed, the voters might even find that fact, in itself, strangely significant...

...But the Man from Mars, unaccustomed to this unique protective courtesy accorded the well-known, might find it a little strange that cigarette brands, bedroom furnishings, and children's divorces should be freely considered as public property whereas matters of money should be rigidly respected as far too personal for airing in the press or on the radio...

...Whenever the members of Congress try to get away with a special favor to themselves, as Congressmen— as by special dispensations under the gas rationing program—the press and the people will yell their heads off to stop it...

...It need only require that every member of Congress, every Federal judge, every Federal official above a stated salary level (and also, certainly, every $l-a-year man or nothing-a-year man) must, upon taking office, file with a government agency—say, the SEC—a list of all his property holdings and of all his other important sources of income, as well as a total income figure...

...But what about our public servants, our government officials, the men to whom we entrust the destinies of the nation and ourselves...

...It is scarcely necessary to be a Marxist to appreciate that a man's political and social ideas are tempered, sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously, to his economic status—to the amount of property he owns and the amount of income he gets...

...It is the $64 question about any prominent man: What is your income...