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Who Should Govern Congress? Access to Power and the Salary Grab of 1873

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2006

LEE J. ALSTON ,
JEFFERY A. JENKINS  and
TOMAS NONNENMACHER
LEE J. ALSTON
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Economics and Institute of Behavioral Sciences, Campus Box 4832, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309; and Research Associate, NBER. E-mail: [email protected].
JEFFERY A. JENKINS
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208. E-mail: [email protected].
TOMAS NONNENMACHER
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Box 20, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA 16335. E-mail: [email protected]..
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Abstract

We examine the politics of the “Salary Grab” of 1873, legislation that increased congressional salaries retroactively by 50 percent. A group of New England and Midwestern elites opposed the Salary Grab, along with congressional franking and patronage-based civil service appointments, as part of a reform effort to reshape “who should govern Congress.” Our analyses of congressional voting confirm the existence of this nonparty elite coalition. Although these elites lost many legislative battles in the short run, their efforts kept reform on the legislative agenda throughout the late nineteenth century and ultimately set the stage for the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 674 - 706
Copyright
© 2006 The Economic History Association

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