The National tribune., 1884-09-25
RESIGNATION OF COL. DUDLEY.

missionership OF Pensions When man retires
after three years service at the head of SO i'm
portant an institution as the Bureau of Pensions
there is ordinarily just reason for expecting
that he viii receive much and well-deserved
praise.
No other position in the service of the peo-
pie affords more magnificent opportunities for
the display of the grand qualities of justice,
wisdom, discernment, and generosity. If a
man is weIl-endowed by Nature with the high
est attributes Of mind and heart the Pension
Office is the place of all others where they
viii manifest themselves like unto city set
on hin or great beacon light on tower.
As the Grand Almoner of the Nation, the
official given the Republics purse and charged
with the sacred duty of seeking out and COM
forting and protecting against need those who
had been sore-stricken in its defense he is
given scope for every good impulse, and an
opportunity to scatter blessings broadcast.
1t is a luxury TO do good. Even in the small
purest and most eleyating pleasures of life.
What must it be. then, to be delegated to express
in substantial dollars and cents the gratitude
of 60,000,0o0 people to the men to whom they
owe everything2 Is it not an intoxicating
aspiration for every generous-minded man?
We say it far more in sorrow than in anger
that Col. Dudley has failed signally to rise to
the level of his grand opportunities
There was much expected of him when he
entered the Office He was thought to have
especial fitness for the place. he had been an
unusually good soldier, and lost limb in the
service Of his country. He was reported TO be
a fine executive officer, with comprehensive
ness Of view and capacity for organization very
much above the average.
WeIl-wishers for the eountry's honor and for
the soldiers who relied upon that honor were
sanguinely hopeful that his entrance into the
Pension Bureau would be followed by a radical
reformation Of the narrow and wretched policy
which had made his predecessor so exceedingly
unsatisfactory and secured his removal.
His appointment was given him in the san
guine hope that he would force fresh blood
and vigOr into the clOgged veins of the PEN
sion Bureau. That institution had been stag
mated almost to paralysis under the load of
formslities and circumlocution, which seemed
intended to make work instead of facilitating
its performances.
The bars ii erected in the way Of the prompt
adjudication Of claim and the sluggishness Of
its procedures were denial Of justice to the
men if was created 10 serve, and continual
defeat of the very object Of its existence. 1t
threatened to cease being an agency for the
granting Of pensions and become merely an
insu-nOuntable obstacle in the way Of any
claimant obtaining his just desert.
Its mal-administration became one of the
crying evils Of the day. President and Con-
gressmen were spurred up by the energy and
persistence of the complaints into making a
radical change
President Garfield told Dudley that he
wentod him TO "reorganize the Pension Bu-
reau from top to bottom" Congress gave him,
indeed, money by the millions, and doubled
and trebled the clerical force, that he might
do at once and thoroughly what should be
done for the deserving soldiers and sailors of
the Nation.
He accepted the Office with this purpose dis
tinctly impressed upon his mind. He promised
those who appointed him and prominent mem
bers of the GAR that he would finish up the
entire pension business of the country inside
OF three years.
When be frst entered Office he seemed reso-
Lutte in fulfilling the expectations had of him.
He set to work with energy and industry to
clear away the accumulated business in the
Office, and to adjudicate claims upon their
merits and not upon the manner In which
they satisfied red-tspe requirements. But he
encountered the opposition of few soldier
hating papers in New York and elsewhere
and he was not bold enough to do his duty in
spite Of papers which had denounced the war
and the Hessian hirelings"
Then, too as men not of the strongest wills,
who come to Washington as heads of Depart
ments and Bureaus are likely TO, he succambed
to the inertia and resistance Of the system he
found in vogue in the Pension Bureau. His is
neither the brain nor the viii power of re.
former, and he had not the stamina to resist
citations Of even bad preeedents and the dead
ening influence Of established practices. He
sank into the evil rut in which his predecessor
had travelled, and turned his energy to making
it deeper and more hopeless.
TOO LATE AND TOO LAME.
Since his resignation Col Dudley is working
the press vigorously to impress the public il
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