The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-02-11
The New Bareau Of Morality.
gron, The ". Y Uorld.

FROM Ule ~. 7. VOTtd
Could anything be more inexcusably dis
graceful than the attempt which has been
made in Congress to cheat the widows of SOL
diers out of the miserable pittance to which
they are entitled under the pension law, and
to place the character of these women as we'll
as their money at the mercy of the caprice, the
cupidity, or the lust of the disbursing officers
of the Pension Bureau? ''There is genera
tion that curSeth their father and doth not
bless their mother; generation that are pure
in their own eyes, and yet are not washed
from their ilthiness; generation whose eyes
are lofty, and their eyes lifted up on high a
generation that for teeth have swords, and
grindeth with their jaw-teeth, to devour the
needy from off the earth and the poor from
among men," Here you have the party of
moral ideas photographed to the life, and
never were their hypocrisy, their self-right-
eousness, and their insuferable meanness
made 80 vividly apparent as they were by this
proposition to turn the Pension Office into
bureau of morality, and to compel every
| woman who presents herself to receive her
| pension to come armed with certificate of
| good character, and to disprove any allega-
| tions against her chastity which malice, envy,
| or lust may have contrived to invent.
| 1t appears thatthe moral sense Of the Com
| missioner of Pensions has been shocked by
the discovery, fancied or real, that some of the
| widows borne upon the pension rolls OF the
| United States "were oohabiting without mar
| riage, refusing that solemn and legal rite, and
living in open prostitution" " and ne became at
| once taken up with zeal that "the Government
should not be unwittingly placed in the strange
attitude of offering premium on immortality"
| Thea method which he, or rather the member
| of Congress whom he inspired, proposed for
the cure of this evil, and for bringing back
these erring women to the paths OF virtue,
was sublimely simple and severe. 1t was to
| dHau fhn
annual stipend on which they were leading
life of riotous prohigacy and unbounded
| luxury, at the rate of eight dollars month;
and TO tame the fever of their blood by cutting
| off their income.
Umieht have occurred to any one who was
not very moral philosopher that, II 1t were
true that the widow of soldier was leading
life of shame, her downfall might be traced,
not to the fact that she had too much money,
but rather that she had too little, and that the
Government might be placed in the strange
attitude of Offering premium on morality II a
little OF the money which is yearly squandered
for the good of the party were devoted to IN
oreasing the stipeDds OF pensioned widows,
placing them above the reach of temptation
and relieving them from the pressure OF abso-
lutte want, and that good results might also
follow reform II the whole matter OF dis
buIsiDg pensions, since, under the present
system, frauds innumerable and grevous
are constantly practised upon the pen
sioners, and in many cases the money
due them is withheld, month after month, on
the most frivolous and vexatious pretexts,
swelling meanwhile the bank account OF the
pension agent, and bringing to him hand
some interest. All this, however, has nothing
to 40 with the principle involved in the pro.
pOsltlon OF the Commissioner of Pensions and
the Tension Committee, placed before the
House of Representatives by the Hon. Mr..
rerham, "of the cold and frgid region of
Maine, " that the payment of pension to the
widow OF soldier should be made contingent
upon her chastity. There was no such stipu-
laIon IN the contract which the wives of the
soldiers OF our army made with the Govern
ment me. when they gave up their husbands to
was not so nominated in the bond. The
contract simply was that, il the husband Of a
woman was slain, she should receive, as the
price OF ms life, certain pitiful SUN of
take to herself another husband. II was
hard bargain at the best and none but
moral philosopher would dream OF now