The legislative session of 1871 cost $958,956.50, although the Assembly appropriated only $641,400, the average cost of each Senator amounting to about $5300, of each Representative, $7300, making the average cost of a member $113.50 per day.[340] With this statement should be compared the cost before the war, when the largest amount ever appropriated for an ordinary session was $100,000.[341] The explanation of the enormous difference is to be found in the governor’s comment[342]: It was squandered in paying extra mileage and per diem of members for services never rendered[343]; for an enormous corps of useless clerks and pages,[344] for publishing the journals of each house in fifteen obscure parish newspapers, some of which never existed, while some never did the work[345]; in paying extra committees authorized to sit during the vacation and to travel throughout the State and into Texas[346]; and in an elegant stationery bill which included ham, champagne, etc.[347] The official reporter in the Senate drew the munificent salary of twenty dollars per day,[348] while each representative of a newspaper received a generous gratuity. The enormous printing bills were, of course, a result of corruption. The public printing had cost the State in three years $1,500,000,[349] a goodly share of which Warmoth was accused of obtaining because of his fourth interest in the State paper.[350] Under the law the three commissioners named a State printer for the journals, laws, and debates, but they were also authorized to have the printing done by certain country papers. In addition the House and Senate claimed the right to select other country papers to publish these documents officially, to be paid from the contingent funds, so that thirty-five or forty more were so selected. The sum of $180,000 was paid to papers in New Orleans in 1871, outside of the official organ.[351] Many of the papers were sustained only by these contracts.[352] It was generally believed that men were sent over the country to edit these papers in order to build up the interests of the governor, while Carter, on the other hand, openly admitted that he gave his patronage to papers which would support the reform movement.[353]