The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-04-01
The Dependent Pension Bill.

WASHINGTON, March 31.-After routine
business, Reagan addressed the Senate on
the bill for the issue of treasury notes on
the deposit of silver bullion. The bill, he
said, was intended to relieve the country
from the effects of the worse than blunder
of Congress In suspending the silver coin
age in 1873. He regarded it as hopeful sign
that the Republican Senate would ioin in
the great work, even though the remedy
proposed might not be the best 1t was to
be regretted that the committee has not
reported bill for the free and unlimited
coinage of silver as well as gold He ia
vored the payment of the bonded indebted
ness of the government in silver as well as
gold, the issue of coin certificates. receiv
able for public and private dues and taxes
and the retirement of all legal tender and
national bank notes of less denomination
than $40, and the subtitution of coin certifi-
Gates.
The dependent pension bill was then
taken up, the first question being on
Plumb's amendment removing the limita-
ton as to Arrears of pensions.
Berry asked if any estimate had been
made of the cost of removing the Limitation.
Plumb replied that the commissioner of
pensions estimated it at about four hun
dred and seventy million dollars. and the
chairman of the House committee on pen
sions estimated it at five hundred million
dollars. 1t would be somewhere about
those figures.
Frye regretted the amendment before the
Senate. There was danger of overlapping
in the matter of pensions. When Cleve-
land commenced to veto pension bills not
only the Democratic party ratified what he
| did, but many business men of the Repub-
| lican party too. He warned Senators they
were imperilling the truest interests of the
soldiers and creating prejudice against
pensions.
Hawley spoke in similar vein. The
American nation certainly has not been
stingy. The pension expenditure for the
next year will be nearly one hundred and
thirty million dollars. No nation in the
world ever appropriated for it's soldiers a
sum to be compared with that. He begged
| the old soldiers to remember that the
objection to getting into another war
would be, not the cost of carry
ing it on, but the consequences of
it, and also asked them to remember these
enormous sums of money came out of the
pockets, very largely of people as poor as
themselves. He related an anecdote of
General Grant on the latters last visit to
| Washington, when, in a conversation on
pensions, he said: "If l were President I
would sign any reasonable bill to relieve
the distress of the honest soldier or his
widow or children, but should not vote
one dollar to the able bodied men," ''That
last expression" said Hawley, 'sank into
my memory, and that is my platform. l
don't believe my state,war is me to ado
$500, 900, 600 to the debt of the republic"
After further discussion, Plumb's
amendment was rejected-yeas 9, nays 46.
Yeas were: Allison, ingalls,, Henderson,
MITCHELL Plumb, Quay, Sherman, Turpie
and Voorhees,.
An amendment by Call to include those
who served in Indian wars prior to 1870
was rejected.
An amendment by Vest providing that
the money to meet the appropriation of the
under bill be raised by a tax income, was
laid on the table.
An amendment by Plumb to pay pen
sion of IS per month to all who served
ninety days in the late war and who are
sixty seven years old or as they attain that
age was reiected-19 to 80. The bill then
passed, yeas, AZ; nays, II.