The Lebanon express. (Lebanon, Linn County, Or.) 1887-1898, 1889-01-25
wnsAiNGroN LETTER.
[FEoln ouE resular eorr0spondent.l

y
pension system. Your last war, / be-
lieye, closed nearly quarter of a CEN
tury ago Thus spoke TO ME a sur
prised German Army surgeon, dele
gate to the International medical con
vention last year. What would my
Teutonic friend say had hc heard Rep
resentative Dcckery tell the House last
week that the attorneys fees in in
crease cases alone, at $40 per case
amounted to nearly $400, 900 last year
Our pension system is the most gigan-
tic IN the world. Fifteen hundred
clerks work year In and year out II
the pension bureau ahjudicatine
claims, and the number Of cases only
Increases. East, west, north, south, |
travel two hundred and fifty special /
examiners investigating the more com
plicated of these claims. In the offices |
of the Adjutant-General and Surgeon
General twelve h.ndred clerks fill IN
the years searching official records Of
service In the Second Auditors office
over n hundred clerks are employed in
pension matters. At the agencies an
other hundred make payments. Near
" three thousand people are thus ex-
clusively employed by the govern
ment, at an expense, say 100000 per
year, in salaries alone. Enormous
:. buildings are devoted to the business,
hundreds of tons of paper are consum-
ed and thousands of gallons of ink
shed in the cause. In the pension Of
flee proper work accumulates faster
| than il can be disposed of. and Con-
r gress refuses the necessary number of
clerks 10 adjudicate the claims within
reasonable time And yet the last
: war closed quarter Of century ago.
E The uninitiated reader must remem-
: ber, however, that sur pension system
has been of slow growth, for although
a general pension law was enacted in
l792, it was not until after the civil
war that anything like practice was
established, and even then the practice
: had TO undergo thousand changes Of
! detail. To-day the laws and practice
Of the Bureau, the decision of the Sec
retary and the rulings or the Commits
= sioner, make quite a respectable vol
unle. There are hundred grave de
!, 4 eisiohs on s1line of duty as man.
more as to the rights of attorneys, al
avalanche of decision on minor points
!, and q wilderness Of rulings unde
these decisions. And lastly there il al
amazing list of rates allowed, from ;
per month allowed for the loss of
:. portion of the little finger to the 81
= per month given for the loss of botl
eyes, both legs or both arms. Ther
= ore fixed rates for everything but dis
eases. The rat - for diseases are fixe
!. by guessing.
And here enters the first objections
bic feature of the system. All ovt
this country are resident examinin
q surgeons, who devote part of one de
!. of each week to the physical exanin;
ton of claimants. There are about
thousand of these people, and tn
branch of the service costs about $500
600. In disease cases their decisio
ng generally fixes the rate allowed. {
course the doctors are not all pref
Ire diced, and those who are not all cap
BILE A very large minority may
ire found either at one extreme or Il
other, the extreme Of generosity or Il
dl- extreme of distrust toward claimant
Very often particularly graspiI
no board of surgeons will rate every clair
ant high in order to swell the amou
II of their own fees, as the claimants 500
learn in any district where the ''eal
be est'' board lies and ask to be Sc
there.
Ter Politics sometimes bears q hand
fixing the rate allowed. l once SO
IS going ont of an examining surgeon
office hearty, bluff, county comm
di- sioner and local politician, follow
slowly by ragged, painfully cripple
ht' prematurely old man. was not mu
nt- surprised to learn few months aft'
nrt ward that the commissioner had be
ng' allowed SIS per month for some IN,
j, terious facial neuralgia, and the cri
not pie had Leen increased to 81 T
month for his open and disehargi
wound of hip. And my surprise W
oi no greater when the surgeon was no.
nan mated for the state senate, on clC
ieu vote, by the efforts of the aforess
'iu neuralgia politician.
W