The National tribune., 1880-01-01
Causes of Delay ii Allowance of Pensions.

know what are the real causes Of delay in action in
the Pension Office
The great controlling and most effective cause is
in the ruling, belief and conduct of the Commits
soner. Congress in the Pension Laws, has invest
ed in that officer a very great discretion--without
any supervision and without any proper ap
peal He can grant refuse pension upon
his single opinion, He decide testimony suf-
fcent insufficient, he and he only decide upon
the truthulness fasehood Of the proof offered
There is from his judgment nominal appeal to
the Secretary of the Interior but that officer is too
fully occupied in other duties to give the slightest
personal attention to such cases, and if any
nation is given at ALL it is by clerk trained at the
Pension Office Under these circumstances it is ev-
dent that the Commissioner exercises arbitrary,
uncontrolled and unlimited power which from its
very nature is liable to abuse.
Still further to show the manner of decision it is
the practice cf that Office that the Commissioner
very rarely sees the original papers themselves, in
cases on which he acts. The cases are examined
by clerks who form their opinion and the case goes
before the Commissioner upon brief of evidence
made by the clerk and on that brief he passes judg
ment
The opinions practice and preudices of the head
of department rapidly travel down the line of in
feriors and the clerks soon become the echo of the
chief If the Commissioner is a fair liberal just
and mercifu man. the subordinates acquire his tone
but if the Commissioner is a hard, technical and diff
fcut man, the business Of the Office takes that
course
Until Bentley became possessed of the notion that
he must have set of courts of his own a notion
which he has for three years pushed on Congress in
ba follo yrod tha linz bicb
his predecessors had taken, and the business went
on smoothly Claims were honestly adjudicated with
reasonable dispatch But from the time when he
became possessed by this extraordinary pan every
thing in his office was moulded and handled to suit
and advance his pet measure. 1t was in aid of this
project that he developed the idea of vague uncer-
tain yet enormous mass of fraud-it was in aid OF
this idea that he stultied himself and his clerks by
the absurd general and sweeping statement, that
neither he nor they could bring themselves to be-
lieve the evidence ofered"-it was TO sustain this
idea that he declared that no additional number OF
clerks could relieve his Office fromthis burden There
was fairly in his Office large accumulated business
but to render this mass more startling to Congress
he has added so 600 cases from his REJECTED FILES.
which far as his Office is concerned dis
posed of and done with cases running back to
1852 and lS63-ln which hnal action has been had
and in which probably most of the parties are dead
And yet he has added these to the list of unsettled
and pending claims, to make the apparent load upon
the Office more monstrous
Nobody knows better than Mr.. Bentley that
these dead and done for and no reason can be
given for this late change, except the one given
above, unless Mr. Bentley means US to understand
that nothing is settled in his office.
1t is for the same end and in support of the sam,
idea that he has for nearly four years. officially Sian
dered the reputation of the American people and es
pecially the soldiers, officers and comrades neigh
bors and friends of the claimants and the local ex
amining surgeons by repeatedly charging that the,
are ready and willing to connive at and conspre il
flse alities fnrgnrieS nerinries and nricin