The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-08

than to earn their bread and butter by honest
labor. We referred a short time ago to the
charge made against this model Congressman
of forging q check for q pension, bat il now
appears that this was but one out of a
number of cases Of fraud in which
he is implicated. II is now
alleged that he procured back pay and allow
ances to the amount of $500, but that he
only gave $40 to the widow in whose behalf
it was obtained; that he made a regular bust
ness of having bills passed by Congress, the
recipient of the benefits of which paying
him one-half; and that on one occasion he
obtained a pension for a man who had served
in the Confederate army, and who had never
shouldered a musket in his life for the
National Government. We may we'll inquire
whether there is not something radically de-
fective in the present organization of the
Pension Bureau when such frauds as these
are allowed to be perpetrated. If this man
Butler has been making a regular business
of swindling not only the pensioners
but the Government also ever since
1867, why may not hundreds of others be en-
gagged in like transactions? All the informa-
ton we are able to obtain about the inside
management of the pension Bureau indicates
not only that ample facilities for fraud are
afforded, but that if a Pension agent is able
to keep on good terms with the authorities
at headquarters, he will be permitted to run
his Office pretty much as he pleases. If this
is not the case, why has not Colonel Forbes,
of this city, not been removed by the chief of
the bureau? Without pretending to implicate
Colonel Forbes in the frauds for which one
of his clerks was tried and sentenced a few
weeks ago, sufficient has been proved against
him to show that he is not
a fit man for the place he holds.
He has acknowledged that money has
been advanced by him to pensioners at usu-
rious rates of interest, and this, as an open
and barefaced violation of the law, ought to
have secured his prompt removal indepen-
IDENTIFY of any of the other charges of irregu-
larity that were brought against him. That
Colonel Forbes was not removed and that
Roderick r. Butler was permitted during a
series of years to use it as a medium for his
swindling transactions prove conclusively
that there is something very rotten in the
Pension Bureau, and that a complete and
radical reform is imperatively needed. Con-
gress, at its last session, under a strong pres
sure of public opinion, passed a law for
the payment of pensions more frequently
than heretofore and prohibiting the de-
duction of agents fees. The ring
of pension agents, however, was
powerful enough to prevent such law being
passed as was really needed, and the whole
cumbrous, expensive, ~inconvenient, andinefi-
cient agency system was continued simply
because it provided an immense number of
lucrative offices which could be bestowed
as rewards for political services. For this
reason, and for this reason alone, were the
pension agencies maintained, and, as the case
of Colonel Forbes sufficiently proves, a clear
political record at Washington is all that a
pension agent needs to enable him to drive
a thriving trade in the way of d~iscounting
claims in spite of law, justice, and public
opinion. There is such a thing as killing the
goose that lays the golden egg; and power
full as the pension agents ring has shown
itself to be, it ann stand many such
damaging revelations as have been made in
the cases of Colonel Forbes and Congress
man Butler; and if the attention of the public
is once fairly concentrated Upon the corrup-
tons of the Pension Bureau, Congress will
be compelled to make a change that will ami
hilate the ring.