The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1897-08-18
NEARLY A MILLION PENSIONS.
AN INCREASE OF $4,000 IN ONE
YEAP.
Two Thousand Millions of Dollars
Paid i'm Pensions Since 1861.
Some Serious Facts.

Some Serious Facts.
The war ended more than thirty-twC
years ago. Many men who are now the
heads of families, leaders in politics anG
commerce, members of congress, govern
ors, presidents of banks, railroads, ETC.,
were babies in swaddling clothes at the
time of the surrender. Many young girls
in piaafoles when their fathers and
brothers returned from the war are now
mothers of grown children; some of
them, indeed, ale grandmOthers. Yet
the pension list goes on increasing. Age
cannot wither it, nor circumstances de-
crease its cost to the taxpayers. When
everything else ianguishes he pension
list lifts up its head in plenty and wakes
ia The revenues of the government
may fail; the people may groan under
the load of taxation and the hard times
from crop failures and other adverse
circumstances, but the pension pay
meDts go on forever, like Tennyson's
brook.
In our dispatches of Sunday appeared
the summary of a signed statement by
Pension Commissioner Evans, setting
forth the fact that during the last fiscal
year nearly "a 900 names had been placed
on the pension rolls, swelling the total of
the list to 983,528 pensions, 1t needs,
therefore, only few Inore than 10000
additional names for the list to touch
the million mark-the ambition of the
pension bureau under the Harrison ad-
minstraton. Since the Mckinley ad-
ministradon is pledged to pensions and
the bureau is under the management of a
politician of the practical" sort, who
knows how to place public money
where it will do the most good, " it may
be expected that the million mark will
be reached before the snow flies, or very
shortly thereafter.
What proportion Of the public revenues
is taken up by pension payments? Prob.
ably few persons have any idea. Touch
ing upon the subject a week or so ago.
the New York sun, whose editor was
assistant secretary of war during the Lin
coin administration, said: Glow many
people stop to consider that more than
nine-tenths Of the money raised by the
IarlL has been going for pensions during
the past four years? How many people
would believe, without turning to the Of
fetal documents for the figures, that
during the same period more than 90 per
cent of all the revenues raised by inter
nal taxes has been consumed by pen
sion establ shment maintained on ac-
count of a war that ended quarter of
century ago, and concerning which so
good a republican and so loyal veteran
as James Aoram Garfield remarked
twenty-five years ago, we may reasona-
bly, expect that the expenditures for pen
sions (then aggregaung about $500, OOO,-
900 year, will hereafter steadily de-
crease unless our legislation should be
unwarrantabiy extravagant.'
We criticise the monarchies of Europe
for putting upon the people the expense
Of immense standing armies, vet we.
thirty-two years after the end of our
war, maintain standing army of pen
sioners numbering practically 1000, 900,
and at cost per year greater than the
total annual military budget of Germany
and aDproximating the total annual mil
itary expenditures of either France OF
Russia; and besides this we keep up our
own standing army and expensive navy
Since 1861 the government has paid il
pensions more than two thousand nil
lions of dollars, and the beginning O.
the end is not yet in sight.-Savannal
News