dollar-a-year men

[Baker, John]

        I believe that "dollar-a-year men" refers to the former practice
of wealthy individuals serving in government posts for the nominal
annual salary of $1.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Arnold M. Zwicky
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 1:15 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: dollar-a-year men

no, i'm not offering this as a novel expression, or tryting to antedate
it.  just an observation that it might not be understood by today's
readers.  here's George Packer in The New Yorker, 7/4/05, p. 52:

-----
The home front of the first two years of the Iraq war was not like that
of the Second World War, and it was not like that of Vietnam...
There were no war bonds, no collection  drives, no universal call-up, no
national mobilization, no dollar-a-year men.
-----

the rest of the allusions could be figured out from context, or involve
semantically compositional combinations, but i'm not entirely sure about
"dollar-a-year men".

arnold