The National tribune., 1893-12-21
AN OPEN LETTER
To The Commissioner of
Pensions.
Hon I'm ToebrPu-

and the words which fell from His divine
lips impress d lessons that are, if possible
even more applicable to the life of to-day
tran they were to the time when He lived
and minister, on earth.
He was particularly severe upon class o.
inflammatory shams and pretenders who
made as much trouble in Judea 10 centuries
ago as they do to-day. He remarked with
much severity that when it suited their pur-
poses they would strain at guat, and again
would swallow a camel, and again that they
were so eager to see a mote in their
brothers eye, that they did not detect the
beam which was in their own.
The applicability of these illustrations to
the pension-haters will at once strike you.
DoUb less, they have done so long age, and
every days experience in the Pension Bu-
reau has gi7 yen a clearer impression of their
| force.
The whole pension-hating policy seems a
| convulsive siraining at some imaginary
gnat while swallowing with gulp mon
strOus camel. So eagerly look the pension
haters for mdgets of fraud that they en-
tirely fail TO SIC the great double-humped
camel of wrongs and cruslties 10 hundreds
of thousands Of worthy claimants who are
in the most ungIateful way denied their
| righ 6. So anxious are they to discover
s. me moe upon the record of a claimant
that they cannot see the massive timbers Of
the fabric of injustice that they have builded
up. They would much rather have the Gov
ment spend millions in hunting mythical
frauds than that it should run the slightest
risk of paying some poor veteran few
cents month more than a strict interpreta-
ton of the law might perchance give him.
They would fill the country with hired
spies and malicious informers, would crowd
the poorhouses with the decrepit veterans
and their widows, and people the grave
yards with The vic inns of the Nations in
gratitude to avoid the least chance of some
one receiving trfling overpsyment
The heartlessress and hypocrisy of this
policy are sickeniog. Filling the public ear
with sounding declarations that no desery-
ing veteran Beed fear" that :" they favor a
just and liberal pension policy to the soldiers
and sailors of the Union" they yet urge the
harshest treatment of the deserving veterans,
and applaud every suggestion of injustice
them no measure adverse to the veteran can
be too drastic no robbery too fragrant.
bowed forms and wasted limbs of oncr-stal-
wart defenders of the country, with grim
death mockiDgly closing every month thou
sands of unsettled accounts, with hun
dreds OF thousands of claims in the Pension
Bureau the paper of which is yeIlowed and
the ink paled with years, with every mail
that reaches the Bureau burdened with
less men and women for action on their
ella ms, they still clamor for cutting down
of the pension appropriations still harsher
restrictions on the granting of pensions,
still more money and energy wasted in
wild-goose chases after frauds.
Not in ali Jerusalem, not in all Israel
no, Comrads Lochren, not in all the world,
singing word.-has there been more per-
verse and malignant straining at gnats and
swallowing camels than in the opposition
TO pensions.
For over 80 years now the ears Of our
people have been distressed by the persistent
vocifera,ion Of pension frauds" The minds
of large portion of The rising generation.
and Of the foreign immigrants to orr shores,
have been poisoned by it. 1t has furnished
the fame Of American manhood before the
world. 1t has chilled the fountains of Ma
tional justice, and sent hundreds of thou
sands of deserving veterans to their graves
robbed Of their rights. 1t has taken bread
from the mouths of soldiers orphans; food,
FIRE, and shelter from the decrepid and
needy; medicines from the bedside of those
sick unto death, and faith in human justice
and honor from the hearts of those who had
trusted their Government az next to their
God.
From time to time in the past 30 years
other Commissioners of Pensions-your
predecessors-have been moved by the We
hement persistence of this cIamor to thor
| oughly investigate the matter. None of
| them, however, spent anything like the
time, labor, and money upon the work that
you have, because they were more quick to
see its uselessness and futility than you have
been. They found out very coon, as you
| did, how baseless the clamor was, and stop
ped at once wasting the public money and
the energies of the Bureau upon such profit
less inquiry. Congress, too, repeatedly took
turn at the same thing, with precisely
1