Southwest-sentinel. [volume] (Silver City, N.M.) 1883-189?, 1892-12-13

bANohAAobA1 bNNh HA'oNANN1 HhN
allowed. In that year, 1872, Gen.
A. Garfield, speaking to the
house Of representatives both rs a
legislator and as a veteran of the
Union army, declared that the
pension list was then swollen be-
yond all account" Il am the last
man." said Gen. Garfield, "to say
a word against voting pensions to
all persons who deserve them.
But 1 wish TO say to the House
that more frauds are being perpe-
trated on the government by claim
agents in different portions of the
country than from almost any
other single source" In that
same year while discussing the
general financial situation, Gen.
Garfield, as chairman of the COM
mittee on appropriation expressed
the opinion that " we may reason
ably expect that the expenditures
for pensions will hereafter stead
lily decrease, unless our Legislation
should be unwarrantably e%xtrava-
CANT"
At the time when Gen. Garfield
declared that the honest and legit-
innate pension expenditure of the
United States government had
reached its high water mark, and
might be expected steadily there
after to decrease, the number of
pensioners of all classes, as s hown
by the commissioner report then
last issued, was 207,495, and the
aggregate Of their pensions $780,
804,994. Twenty years later the
number of pensioners had increas-
ed more than three hundred and
twenty per cent, and the annual
pension expenditure of the gov
eminent between four and five
hundred per cent.
The expenditure on account of
pensions during the present fiscal
year will use up every dollar Of
the appropriation of Sl44, $4,000,
and occasion a deficiency estimated
by commissioner Raum at $40, $780,
900.
The commissioners lowest esti-
mate of the appropriation required
for next year is Sl65,000,0 900.
Competent judges believe that the
ifty-third congress will be called
upon to vote pension appropria.
tons exceeding two hundred mil.
lions annually.
These figures stagger the ina
gination. No other evil which
has grown out of republican rul,
is comparable to this. No scanda
that has ever stained the govern
ment of any country has equalleC
this %stupendous plumber of The
taxpayers in the name Of gratitude
to the nations defenders. Thirty
years after the close of the civil
var we shall be paying a million
pensions, or as many pensions a.
there were soldiers in The UnioI
army at any one tine during the
war. We shall be paying, on &C
count OF a war closed more than
quarter of a century ago. a sum o
money three times greater thar
the total annual expenditure o
the United States government a
the time when the war began.
But this is not the whole story
Behind the army of 876,063 pen
sioners there is n reserve force o
about half a million clainantI
waiting for the machinery of thu
pension bureau to "adjudicate'
their claims under existing laws
and the pension bureau is muster
ing them in at the rate of two hun
dred thousand q year. AnC
behind the reserve force of actua
applicants whose claims are on I'll,
at Washington, there is still anoth
er reserve, an uncounted ARM
waiting only for the passage o
laws extending the scope Of th'
governments expenditure.
How long will il be before ever,
survivor of the Uuion army, be hi
hero or sneak, four years soldie.
or thirty-day recrait, feeble o.
stalwart, rich or poor, will figure
asa benehciaryo + an eleemosynary
institution which has no parable
10 the history Of the world?
The time has come for a change
Of policy. The pension list il
lmanifestly swollen With fraudulonI