The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-06-25
DISABILITY PENSION.
To the Editor Of the Eagle.

| To the Editor Of the Eagle
The passage by the senate of the confer
ence disc bility pension bill is an assurance
that ~ will become a law. AT last justice
is being done to class of men who bore in
| their young manhood the heat and burden
of the day without contracting hospital
record, and comes to the relief, untimely
as it may be, to many poor soldier )
! widow and orphan children.
| have heard some express the opinion
that the bill in its effects would be drag
net and include as many pensioners as the
service bill, besides being shorn of any
sixty year clause. leave every soldier TO
be his own judge after reading the follow
ing declaration which he will be required,
if claimant, to subscribe to under OATH
THAT he is suffering from the following
disability which is of a permanent charac-
ter, viz: piles, hernia, etc, as the case
may be-. That the disability is not the
result of any vicious habits of the claim
ant, and it incapacitates him from the per-
Torrance of manual labor in such degree
as to render him unable TO earn support.
The latter clause of this declaration is so
humiliating that it may deter many de
serving soldiers from taking advantage OF
its provisions.
If disability exists, whether total or
only partial, any honorably discharged
soldier who served three months in the
war, care not who he may be, is justified,
i'll my opinion, in subscribing to the above
declaration. The examining surgeons will
determine the degree OF disability. AS
understand it, disability, whether incurred
during term of enlistment or subse-
quently entities the soldier TO the benefits
of the bill. The soldier who lost an arm
IN a threshing machine or through an acct
dent suffered the amputation of leg, or is
crippled with rheumatism or has his life
made miserable by any or all of the dis
eases to which poor suffering humanity Is
heir, when not the result of his own vicious
habits, comes within the scope of the bill.
In fact it was created for just this class of
our comrades.
donot think it is the intention of the
projectors of the bill that claimant must
declare himself pauper In order that he
may reap its benefits. The wording Of the
bill has been severely criticised by all lead
ing Grand Army men, and it was for this
reason as much as anything else that the
service pension bill was so vigorously
pushed So far as this bill being
a dragnet is concerned the aspersion reflect
both on the honor of the claimant and the
of the examining boards. The
widows declaration is to the effect that
she is at the date of application the widow
of - , an hOnorably discharged
soldier and that So and So are the
names of his children yet surviving who
were under 10 years of age at the date of
fathers death
Kansas, | believe has one-fourteenth of
the surviving soldiers of the war within
her limits. A very low estimate places the
in consequence of this bill
at forty millions of dollars, of which Kan
sas should receive at least eight hundred
thousand dollars, possibly one million
quarterly, in addition to the two hundred
disbursed every three months by
Pension Agent Kelly. This steady inflow
of wealth will compensate in some de-
gree for the steady outflow augmented by
high tariff and low sumptuary laws
NJ. STEWART.