Sacramento daily record-union., 1882-01-28
THE PENSION FRAUD.

try. Now this is very foolish line for
the genuine soldiers to take up, and 1t will
oe necessary for them to abandon 1t TOR
reasons which we will proceed to state.
In the first place it may be assumed legiti-
mately that no Republican journals, at
least. can be rightly suspected OF desire
to do anything short of full justice to the
soldiers and sailors who fought for the
preservation of the Union. The Republi-
can press and party has always and ever
will hold these men in the highest honor,
and their interests will never be forgotten.
But in the present case there is no question
of their interests. The question is OF the
maintenance of law which has from the
first been a mere instrumentality of fraud
and deception; which has been the means
of enabling thousands of impostors to palm
themselves eff as invalid soldiers which
was concocted by claim agents and other
greedy persons, and which invites anl
facilitates fraud in SO many ways as to
render detection impossible.
The bill was passed by Congress under
misapprehension, partly, and partly be-
cause members were too cowardly and
demagogical to resist a measure which had
been artfully devised to bear the out
ward appearance OF popular one. Each
party was afraid Of the other, and the re.
suit was that both voted for the bill In
the House it was not discussed at ALL In
the Senate what was said about it was
absurdly wide of the truth. For instance,
Senator Ingalls,, who has recently made
such ridiculous statements concerning the
measure, then informed the Senate that
''up to the lst of January, 1876, there
"were l6, 455 invalids to whom the bill
"applied, and the amount required to pay
"their arrears would be 50, 529, ,775. In
addition to the above, 5, l45 Widows and
dependents would be entitled to the ben
"efits of the Act, requiring s.. SS7, 534,
making total of Sl3,4l7, l09 required
g to make the bill operative. As two
years had elapsed since this calculation
was made, the Senator estimated that
s., 900, 600 should be added to the amount
stated above. This, then, was the belief
under which the Senate passed the bill
that it would cost from SIS, ,00C, 600 to
$50, 900, 600. Now, let US see what it has
actually cost up to the present time.
The Secretary OF the Treasury in his re-
cent report stated that instead of SIS, ,40O,.
600, which was Senator ingalls, estimate
the Pension Arrears bill has already cost
the country Sl4l. 900, 900, and when the
appropriations for the current fiscal year are
exhausted there will have been drawn from
the Treasury no less than S2ll, 957, 926
while it is declared by the Treasury off.
cials that S235, 900, 600 more will be re-
quired for the arrears of pensions alone.
Now it is not and cannot be pretended that
these enormous sums are demanded for the
payment and relief of bona fae soldiers and
sailors and widows alone. In the case OF
pensions paid only on proof Of the genuine
ness of the claim, all experience proves
that the number of the claimants diminishes
year by year. We are now seventeen years
from the close of the war, and very large
percentage Of those who fought in it are
dead. The presumption is against the
survival of the majority of those who were
forty years old at that time and it is well
known that the Union armies held very
large percentage of men ranging between
35 and 40 There ought therefore to have
been large decline in the pension claims
of late years. In fact, there was such de-
cline prior to the passage of this Act. But
since its passage the claims have been con.
tinually increasing, and they have been so
increasing because fraud has been en-.
ployed.
The Pension Arrears bill is in fact, as the
figures we have quoted show, the most stu.
pendous job that has ever been foisted
upon the country, nor can there be any
doubt as to its true character. For exam
pie, the year before the bill was passed,
viz, 1878, only S27, ,l37, ,O19 was required
for pensions, and the amount had been
steadily decreasing for several years prev
iously. But in 1879, under the stimulus
of the Act, the demand rose to S35 l2l,.
1872 in 1880 to 500, III, l74; in 1881 to
$50, 059, $50; and the amount estimated
for the present fiscal year is SO 900, 600.
Now it is mere nonsense for anyone to pre-
tend that this enormous growth of claims
can be explained on legitimate grounds.
Pensioners do not propagate their kind.
Their natural tendency is to die out, not
to multiply. But the truth is that the
Pension Arrears bill was passed by the
lobbying of Pension Agents, and that these
men and their accomplices of various kinds
have ever since been swindling the Gov
ernment at an enormous rate. The
swindle has now become SO monstrous
that Congress can no longer afford not to
uhAOASVohO hhaS 10 SOlhS AOl"dIu5 but
even now, as shown by Senator Ingalls,
speech the other day, there is so much
demagogism abroad that Senators are
afraid to offer vigorous resistance to the
steal lest their motives should be misun-
derstood. The thieves are thus falling
back upon the real soldiers for protection,
and it has become necessary to inform the
latter of all the facts, that they may alb.
stain from affording any assistance to
these impudent robbers of the treasury.
There is no question of the interests of the
soldiers and sailors at issue. They will
be protected as matter of course. But
they must not make the mistake of identi-
flying their interests with those of the
rapacious knaves who are plundering the
treasury to the amount of hundreds Of
millions under cover of their names. On
the contrary, they must repudiate these
-l Il.