The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-09-05
WAR WIDOWS.
How MatrimOny SwelIS and Perpetu-
ates the National Pension Roll.


From the st. Louis Globe Democrat.
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. Evans sat
at his desk the other day figuring on pen
sions as they concern generations yet un-
born. The declaration of independence is
121 years old. The country is still dis
charging its debt of gratitude in the ma
terial form Of pensions toward those who
"fit' for it. OF course, there are no sur
viving soldiers of the revolution. There
are, however. surviving widows. The
commissioner was specializing on what
that fact has to do with the future of
the present pension list. He has now upon
his roll of monthly recipients 9S3 62S
names. Before the end of the current
year the grand army of pensioners will
pass the 1000 900 mark. 1t is a fair de-
duction that ninety years hence the gov
eminent of the United States will still
be paying pensions for the civil war of
1876.
The army Of George Washington was a
squad compared to the 100000 and more
enrolled in the north to crush the seces-
sion. 1t suffered privations calculated to
sap vitality, but the widows of those pa
triots of Valley Forge are still drawing
pensions. Unless the twentieth century
women differ much from the nineteenth
honor in the year 1897 of quite respecta-
BILE proportions. Pensions conduce to
matrimony. A fixed income which can be
transmitted after death as an estate has
it's bearing on the question of marriage.
Suppose, suggested the commissioner.
with his sheet of figures before him
fourteen years to be the lowest limit of
age for a soldier in the revolution of 1776.
A soldier of that age would have been
50 years old in 1900. Now, the youngest
of our revolutionary widows on the PEN
sion list is SO. She was born in 1914 At
the date of her birth the youngest of the
revolutionary soldiers was 81. If he mar
red this woman when she was Is he was
70. There you have the age conditions of
matrimony not at all unreasonable or I'M
usual
Reasoning from what has proven true
regarding pensioners. the commissioner
has no doubt that during several years to
come girl babies will be born to the des-
tiny of becoming the widows of the vet
Grams of 1866, and of drawing pensions
If there are ten revolutionary widows on
the roll now there may be 1000 civil war
widows in 1896. This is possible without
taking into account the fact that the
world is learning how to live longer. The
ranks of the old soldiers are thinning.
The ranks of the old soldiers widows are
not Nearly one-fourth of the 9SS, 628
names now on the roll are widows. To
be exact, the WIDOWS at present receiving
pensions number 2S5, 522. The proportion is
increasing daily. Soon one-third of the
pensions will go to widows. A few years
later the widows will outnumber the vet
Grams. The time will come when the Wild
ows will exceed the old soldiers in such
numerical relation as they do for the war
of 1872. There are seven survivors of 1872
on the roll, and there are 2,S10 pensioned
widows of that war. The Indian wars
were fought from 1882 to 1S42, from fifty
FIVE to sixty-five years ago. The pension
ed veterans Of those Indian wars number
1878, and the widows 4,2SS. The Mexican
war widows do not quite equal the veter-
ans They number S.072. while the male
pensioners of that war, fought fifty years
ago, are 1892
OF union soldiers who participated in the
civil war the number now pensioned is
741.141 Unless additional laws are passed
this number of civil war veterans will
not grow much. The deaths are about 35,-
900 a year. The new applicants admitted
to the roll, with the greatest diligence the
pension bureau can bestow, will not long
maintain the present strength of pension
ed veterans. But the widows will grow
in numbers for many years to come.
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