The National tribune., 1894-03-08

REDUCTION OF THE PENSION-RoIL.
There was cold, brutal effrontery about
the speech Of Representative O'Neil, of Mas
sachusetts, that was worse than the noisy
malignance to which the veterans are accus-
toned from him and his ilk.
AS Chairman of the subcommittee hav-
the matter in charge, he opened the discus
sion of the Pension appropriation bill, now
going on in the House.
The whole tenor of his speech was
declaration and congratulation that the
pension-roll has reached its highest limit,
and its decline has now begun, and must be
carried on rapidly until it is extinguished.
This is to be done by the simple process
of excluding everybody not on the rolls from
it and dropping those already on until it is
brought within q certain arbitrary figure,
which must be reduced every year there
after This is to be without the slightest
reference to the rights of those already on or
who should be on. Every pretext is to be
employed to get those already on of, and
those not now on the roll are to be kept off
by increasing the difficulty of making salts
factory proof of their claims.
As " the devil can quote scripture when
he likes" so Mr.. O'Neil quoted with great
glee utterances by Senator Ingalls, and
others as to the difficulty experienced in
previous years by claimants in proving up
their rights. However, he had the fairness
to admit that the act of June 81, 1890, had
been passed to relieve them of this difficulty.
He wanted this, though, construed in way
that would deprive the soldiers of substan-
TALLY all the benefits expected from it, by
combining its provisions within the narrowest
regulations concerning ability to earn sup
port by hard manual labor, and resolving
all the doubts strongly against the appli-
cant
Mr. O'Neil said:
gaity of the Pension Office, that one had but apply
for pension to receive it, and to- day the rolls
covered with the names of thousands of men suf-
fering from disability whatever.
Yet, while uttsring this stale Islander, the
speaker knew that after one years prodigious
effort, into which the whole army of Federal
officials have bee n drawn and the expendi-
ture of at least $4,000 which Congress had
appropriated for specia Investigations, had
failed to develop the least foundation for
this statement. Also, in one breath he ad-
mitted that there were hundreds of thou
sands Of deserving veterans unable to get on
the pension-roll from the great difficulty of
furnishing proof which the Pension Bureau
will accept as adequate, and that the Bureau
is constantly making this more difficult.
and then he turns around and says that any
body has been able TO get a pension. Public
speakers, like ordinary liars, should try to
make all their statements agree.
But the thing in his speech that transcends
far mere misstatements of facts and perver-
sions of figures is the cool assumption that,
regardless Of right and justice, disdainful of
the pledged faith of the Nation, hundreds
of thousands of veterans are TO be kept
out of their rights in order to reduce
expenditures, and that the pension policy
of Congress is to be Procrustean bed on
which those who are too short are to
be stretched ont, and those who are too long
are TO be cut off, in order to suit the ideas of
q class of whom 0'Neil is the representative,
who have been coming upon the stage since
the war, and who are impatient TO shove out
of sight and get rid of men who did their
duty, wrecked their bodies, and saved the
country at time when O'Neil and bis cem-
panions were playing marbles and studying
their spelling books in the quiet suburbs of
Boston.