Eureka daily sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1871-1887, 1884-01-13
eureka Dailp Sentinel.
A PARALYZEK.

Inc eX peCteu pAVPNo"A w PS
entire body of survivors of the Union
army has been made in a bill introduced
into Congress by Mr.. Price.
This measure directs the Secretary OF
the Interior to place upon the pension
roll the name Of ''any officer or enlisted
man of the army, navy, or marine corps
of the United States, including regulars
and volunteers, who shall have served
for a period of ninety days subsequent to
March 4, 1861, and prior to July /,
1866"
The rate of pension thus provided is
to be ascertained by reckoning % cents
per month for each month of service,
provided that the aggregate thus OBJ
tanned for the pension shall not exceed
$40 per month, to be paid "for the term
of their lives, from and after the lst day
of July, 1884"
The sweeping character of this measure
is apparent, says the Washington cores
pondent Of the New York Sun, only on
studying its details. Mr.. Price, warned
by the successive engagements of mod
crate pension jobs, in the rival bids Of
Congressman for popularity, is evidently
determined at the outset that no one
shall ever get his laurels by being more
free than he is with the peoples money.
He gives lifetime pensions mot to the
wounded or the invalids alone, but for
the mere fact of service. He gives them
not only to the three years veterans. but
to the three months men. Other
schemes Of this sort, for the survivors of
the war of 1912 or of the Mexican war,
content themselves with a maximum of
IS a month; but he makes the maximum
$40, or a possible sum of $l20 a year.
The service pension law for the veterans
of 1912 was enacted more than sixty
years after the end of that war, when it
was supposed that only a few hundred of
them survived; but this Act is to take
effect less than twenty years after the
civil war, when it is known that hun.
dreds of thousands of it's proposed bene-
f~iciaries are alive.
As if it were not enough that the SOL
diers themselves should have this life
long gratuity, the following provision APP
pears in section 5 of Mr.. Prices bill:
If any person embraced within the
provisions of section 2 of this Act has
died or shall hereafter die, leaving a
widow or a child or children under l6
years of age, on the lst day of July,
1884, or at the date of his death, if SUBJ
sequent to said lst day of July, then
such widow shall be entitled to the same
pension that he would have been entitled
to If living, to continue during her wild
owhood, and no longer, and in case of
her death or marriage, his child Or chill
dren under l6 years of age, shall be en-
titled to receive the same until they sew
orally attain the age of l6 years and no
longer.
Finally, although President Lincoln
issued 10 call for troops until April, 1861,
and the war was certainly over by July,
1865, yet this bill, to make sure of a
grand sweep, dates service emitting to
pensions back to March l, 1861, and for.
ward to July l, 1866.
1t would clearly be possible, under the
terms of this contract, for whole CON-
panies and regiments that never saw a
battlefield or even engaged in a skir-
mish to become lifelong pensioners on
the Treasury. Men of wealth, men still
in the prime of life, men at the age of
40, could draw pensions at the public
expense for perhaps 40 years to come.
Some widows of men who performed
little or no service would be living at the
cost of the Government for the next half
century under the bills provisions.
Ii merely %pensioning the wounded and
the invalids has been so vast a burden
on the country as to effect its entire
legislation for the raising of taxes, what
would happen under this project to PEN
sion for service only, which sweeps in
the great armies as a whole The bill
introduced a few days earlier, to pen.
sion all Union soldiers who have arrived
or who shall arrive at the age of 55
years, was a ''stunner, but Mr.. Prices
proposition "paralyzes" it.