Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-12-07

it will be read with as much of interest as if
he were twitting on accomplished facts.
To the Editor of The Dispatch:
If you want to know what Congress will
do, 1 can tell you. You may smile all you
please, for ga man may smile and smile and
be villain still;' but can predict cor
rectly what Congress will do about pensions.
1t will do it because it has heard from the
boys, and that's why can predict it. too.
More than half a million of our claims are
pending in the Pension Office, and, as 1
have shown in the columns of The DIS
PATCH heretofore, at the present rate these
claims cannot be passed until half the ap-
plIcants are in their graves.
The boys cannot wait any longer. Time
is up! Congress will rip the Pension Office
up. There is a Congressional election next
year. Any man who falters this winter
will never get back to Washington. We
give them 100 days to hustle our pending
claims through.
They will coiify all the pension laws.
simplify them and knock all the red tape
out. SO that our claims can be put through
as fast as you could count pile of bank
notes or read off names in a catalogue.
The s. rule will be abolished, so that SO
and $12 will be the least pension, as under
Tanner and Black. The Tanner rule, that
a private soldiers oath will 60 for as much
as a red-nosed bIigadier's, will be restored,
and the foolish and insulting rule that it
takes two private's sffdavits to equal one
officers, will be reversed. That rule lost us
Ohio and Iowa.
MIGHTY CERTAIN ABOUT 1T.
Congress will call in the $50 special pen
sion agents who go gipsying about the coun-
try gathering testimony(?) at a cost of a
million year, and put the genties to work
on our claims in the Office at Washington.
1t will direct that the 500 clerks in the
bureau who are kept busy answering fool
letters of inquiry shall stop that folly and
go at our claims and that all such letters go
into the waste-basket until we get our pen
sions.
We know the employees will not like this.
1t is a good job, and they will want to string
it out as long as they can. But we can't
wait Our claims must go through this
winter, and then l, 600 of these folks can go
home to th :ir native goose-pasture in the
spring and earn an honest living.
This foolishness will be stopped. Con.
gress will lay hold of it, and save millions
of dollars by doing so. Until this is done,
Congress will pass no pension bills. 1t would
be idle to encourage filing thousands of new
claims until the 500, 600 old ones are settled.
1t will not be guilty OF that folly. You will |
hear things rip up about the Pension Office |
when Congress begins They have heard |
600 votes next year, and that will lift the |
Pension Office out of its boots. You will |
seei
WHICH WAY DO THEY GO?
The soldiers promise to make the next |
Congress Republican, if - The SOL |
diers promise to make it two-Ihirds Demo- |
cratic, if -. You can fill the ellipsis. |
The first faint echo was heard in 1889. 1
Little Ben Harrison heard that feeble pro.
test. One million soldiers who own no
Office on paper; 1,0OO, 900 of their sons and
sons-in-law; 1,000,0 600 of their fathers and
brothers., 000, 900 Ia potent factor and a /
unit-as one man! With 600, 900 pension
claims pending at Washington, going
through like the ''seVen-year itch, with a
President ostracizing men of the ranks and
scaling pensions to 81, no wonder the boys
are mad They won't stand much more.
They will watch Congress, you bet 1t is
life or death on both sides.
He is not the hero who is Speaker. He
is the hero of this Congress who captures
the soldier vote by doing just this. New
bills? Nonsensei We want no new bills.
What good till we get these claims through
and an increase of SO to $40 on the pensions
we have. That is the line on which YOU re-
gain or lose eternally the 100000 soldier
votes-the only line!
SWORN ORGANIZATION.
Inasmuch as we number vet fully /. .OO0.-
900 souls-small and insignificant as the
souls of the rank and file appear in the
estimation of the accursed politicians-stili
we can cast ], ZOO, 900 votes vet, and can
make them felt only by combination and
organization. We have a million sons,
a million sons-in-law, million fathers and
brothers who vote with US, and if we use
good common sense and put our heads TO-
gether and combine, we can force the
politicians to do for us what they have long
promised to do, and never intended to do.
and otherwise never will do.
Ny voice, therefore, this winter is for
such an organization, composed only of those
who Will take an oath to be our friends. and
make eligible to it all voters OF every politi-
cal party. This would give us the whip
hand of the wretched demagogues, and next
year we would fill Congress with men sworn
as solemnly as Masons are sworn to do our
behests as to pensions and q fair share of
public Offices. But this we can never ae-
complish in any other way. Here we should
be simply omnipotent. forgetting politics.
tariffs, temperance and reform, simply be- !
come a solid party of 4, 600, 600 voters, sworn
to enforce such legislation as the
soldiers demand, and only this ard nothing
more, and be done with all further hvpoe-
rlSy and lying. PRIVATE DALzELL. |,
CALDWELL, o., December 6, 1889.
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