The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1891-02-14
The Feeling About Pensions.
From the New York Tribune Feb. 9.

From the New York Tribune, Feb. g.
There has been much change in public
opinion regarding the pension business. The
great increase in pension payments, the dis
closure of abuses or questionable acts in that
branch Of the service, the apprehension that
the rightful payments to veterans have been
largely inflated by frauds on the part of appli-
cants or agents, and the extraordinary de-
mands with which pension agents quickly
followed the legislation of last year-demands
that would have taken a thousand millions or
more from the Treasury-have combined to
produce an unfavorable impression. There
are thousands of voters who were heartily in
favor a wear ago of liberal measures for the
benefit of Union veterans, but who are now
inclined to look with distrust upon measures
heretofore enacted as well as now proposed,
feeling that the business may have gone too
far for the public good.
II would be gratifying to be able to meet
this distrust with strong and unqualified denial
that it had any justification. But ever since
the Tribune began to call attention to the
irregularities or abuses in the service, the
evidence has been accommodating that it is not
in all respects what it should be. The facts
which have come to light have, nevertheless,
gone far to impair public confidence in the
care, impartiality and efficiency of the service,
and TO increase the impression that fraudulent
claims may have been granted in many cases
through the INSCRIPTIONS influence of agents.
The Tribune has only one interest in this
matter, which is that of all honest pensioners
and of all good citizens. The public has a
right to demand that its Treasury shall not
be emptied and its taxes increased by fraud
uleut claims or the devices of INSCRIPTIONS
agents, and that has also become of the first
necessity to the honest pensioners, lest the
! IN thar m
may be impaired, if not destroyed, by the
feeling that the system has become a machine
for the plundering of the country.
/ Vindication of the officials in charge is no
\ longer the question, because the public asks,
| and has some right to ask, how far the rolls
! of recipients OF public money have been
| swelled, whether of late or in years gone by,
whether by collision, by fraud, by neglect,
or by cunning and dishonesty which the best
| officials could not detect, with names that
have no right TO be there. Scarcely any
former officer of the Union Army has not
become cognizant of pensions claims which
he knew ought never to have been considered,
but which have been established through
false swearing, or fraud of some kind, and
there is a widespread feeling that thorough
purging of the rolls would lessen materially
the charges which the Government has to
meet.
If the present Congress desires to do the
best thing possible for Union veterans, it will
set on foot an inquiry which shall clear the
pension rolls, as far as possible, of names
fraudulenty added, and re-ostablish public
confidence in the fidelity of the service and
in the real merit of the great body of pen
sioners. 1t may be mistaken idea, but il
is nevertheless an unfortunately common one,
that u mere fraction of the sum which is now
improperly paid each year to those who have
no rightful claims upon the Government
would cover all the expenses of such an
inquiry if conducted in Il straightforward
business way, with no aim to attack anybody
to smrch anybody, or to help any party, but
solely to establish as fairly as possible the
rights of the Government and the rights o
the pensioners.