dollar-a-year men

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:15 PM -0700 7/10/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>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

I'm assuming it's someone who offers to work for that nominal salary.
This is still, as I understand it, the practice of the occasional pro
bono lawyer or other professional who offers services gratis (well,
almost gratis) but needs to be on the books--in the lawyer's case, to
make sure confidentiality obtains.  In the above case, it would be on
behalf of the war effort.

Larry