Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-01-07
THE BIGGEST OF PENSION JOBS.
Proposing to Pay Money to Every Sur
VivinG Union Soldier.

washington Special.
The expected proposal to pension the
entire body of survivors of the [ niOn army
has been made IN 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 1, 1866"
The rate of pension thus provided is to
be asceTtained by reckoning - cents per
month for each month Of service, provided
that the aggregate thus obtained for the
pension shall not exceed $40 per month,
to be paid ''fOr the term of their lives,
from and after the 1st day of July, 1S84.''
The sweeping character of this measure
is apparent on studying It's details. Mr..
Price, warned by the successive enlarge
ments of moderate 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 not
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 1872 or of the Mexican war, con-
tent themselves with a maximum of $S a
month; but he makes the maximum $40,
or possible sum of $l20 year. The SER
vice pension law for the veterans of 1912
was enacted more than sixty years after
the end of that war, when it was sup
posed that only 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 hundreds of thou
sands of its proposed benefciaries are
alive.
AS if it were not enough that the SOL
diers themselves should have this lifelong
gratuity, the following provision appears
in section of Mr.. Prices bill:
If any person embraced within the provi-
sons of section of this act has died or shall
hereafter die, leaving a widow or child or
children under is years Of age, on the first
day Of July, 1884, or at the date Of his death.
if subsequent to said first day of July, then
such widow shall be entitled to the same PEN
sion that he would have been entitled 10 if
living, to continue during her widOwhOod,
and no longer; and in case of her death or re-
marriage, his child or children under Is years
Of age, shall be entitled to receive the same
until they severally attain the age OF l6, and
no longer.
Finally, although President Lincoln is
sued no call for troops until April, 1861,
and the war was certainly over by July.
1860, yet this bill, to make sure of grand
sweep, dates service emitting to pensions
back to March l, 1861, and forward TO July
1, 1866.
1t would clearly be possible, under the
terms of this contract, for whole compa-
MES and regiments that never saw bat
tlefield or even engaged in a skirmish to
become lifelong pensioners on the Trea-
sury. 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 forty years to come. Some Wild
Ows of men who performed little or no
service would be living at the cost of the
government for the next half century I'M
der the bilPs provisions.
If merely pensiOning the wounded and
the inyalids has been so vast a burden on
the country as to effect it's entire legisla-
tiOn for the raising of taxes, what would
happen under this project to pension for
service only, which sweeps in the great
armies as a whole? The bill introduced
few days earlier, to pension all Union
soldiers who have arrived or who shall
arrive at the age of 80 years, was pre-
p0sterousenOugh,b but Mr. Prices PROPOSE
tiOn dwarfs it.