Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1894-03-15

HOW THE NORTH Is BEING HoKESMITHED
Cleveland Leader.
Every Southern Democrat who rises
in the National House of Representa-.
tives to oppose the giving of pensions
to Union veterans justifies his course by
declaring that it is wrong to make the
South help pay these pensions when.. the
South gets nothing in retnrn.
Last Friday Mr.. Meredith, of Virginia,
who said he gloried in the fact that
there were no patriots in his section
during the war, protested against the
present pension roll sin the name of a
State which had paid three times as
much for pensions as Vermont" land
we got no benefits he concluded.
That statement evidently set Mr.
Hepburn, of Iowa, to thinking and fig
uring. Mr.. Hepburn is one of the ablest
men on the Republican side, close
student, and deep thinker, with a
voice that can dislodge the cobwebs in
the galleries, and what he says may be
depended upon. On Monday Mr.. Hep
burn combated the idea that the South
helped to pay pensions. 1.-The late Con-
federate States" he declared, contribute
not one dollar to the payment of pen
sions" That was bold statement, but
Mr. Hepburn proved the truth of it.
'Of the $150,000,000 internal revenue
taxes" he said, "the South pays less
than $9,000,000; of the $177,000,000
custom receipts, the South pays but
S4,000,000; and of the miscellaneous re-
eeipts less than $2,000,000." Put these
items together. The result is SIS, ,000,0
That is all the South pays toward the
support of the government. What does
it get back? In sugar bounty it gets
s9.000,000: in pensions to Mexican and
Union veterans and their widows, mostly
the former, S5,000,000; and as deficits
in postal receipts, S5.000,000. That
makes total of S19,000,000 returned to
the South, or S4,000,000 than the South
pays to the government. Mr.. Hepburn
was correct. The late Confederate States
do not contribute dollar for pensions.
Still the South isn't satisfied 1t wants
the sugar bounty, or protection to sugar
in lieu thereof. 1t wants protection to
rice, oranges, lemons, and peanuts, and
it wants no protection for the North.
More than that, the people of the South
want $400,000,00O from the National
Treasury on war claims which have been
fled at Washington. These claims can
never be allowed so long as there is a
bar in the federal statutes in the form
If provision requiring claimants to
prove loyalty to the government during
the war, and so long as such a large
share of the National revenues goes for
the payment of Union pensions as now
Several attempts have been made to
give Southern war claimants standing
in the Court of Claims without requiring
proof of loyalty. If that could be done
now and the pensions of Union veterans
could be stopped the South would be
happy, indeed.
The Southern men who have "gone
uutO pOllIiCS U6CduSe IHoy are III LOT
nothing else," as ex-MayOr Hewitt, of
New York, put it, know what they are
about. They are working for their Sec
tion all the time, but they are not always
frank and honest. When, therefore,
they say they they are opposed to pen
sions because they get no benefits them
selves. they do not mean it In exactly
that way. They are opposed to pensions
because Union men get them, and be-
cause they want to see the money which
the North contributes for pensions to
pay the claims of ex-rebels and traitors.
Grover Cleveland and many Northern
Democrats are with them in their antic-
ipated raid on the Treasury, but they
will not make it this year or the next.
The South is in the saddle now, bnt it
is going to be unhorsed in 1894, and, if
indications are worth anything at all, it
will be beaten out of its boots in 1896.
A SAMPLE OF DEMOCRATIC HARMONY.
Pittsburg Times.
The following head lines from Fri
days New York World serve to show
the delightful harmony which prevails
in the Democratic party, of which it