The White House demand upon Congress for running expenses has leaped from the former twenty-five thousand dollars to sixty thousand dollars. As the President’s salary is just under a thousand dollars a week, and as he evidently believes the people expect the President to spend his salary upon the embellishment of the position, it appears that the new White House, the new court, is now on the average costing in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars a week, half from the pocket of the people, the other half from the President’s private pocket. As the heavy expense is crowded into five months of the year--December to April, inclusive--the probabilities are that the new White House is costing during the season not far from three thousand dollars a week. This means that the new departure has certainly doubled, and perhaps trebled, the cost of the White House court, for most Presidents have contributed about half their salary toward holding court and have called on Congress for a supplementary appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. A few years ago such imposing figures as these would have caused a great outcry. In every part of the land, in city as well as country, hands would have been thrown up, and “we, the people,” would have ejaculated: “Three thousand dollars a week! Mercy on us! The fellow must be crazy. What _are_ we coming to?” But we think in large sums these days, and the establishments of our multi-millionaires have accustomed us to big expenditures for what were less than half a generation ago universally regarded as prodigalities. Scores of millionaires spend several times two thousand dollars a week in “maintaining their dignity.” There were some faint, shamefaced mutterings in Congress against the alterations in the White House and the lively leap of the public share in the expenses. But these mutterings died away instead of growing stronger, and the project for raising the Presidential salary to one hundred thousand dollars a year has all but passed Congress.