The Dalles times-mountaineer. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1882-1904, 1897-09-11
PENSION ABUSES.

One of the greatest, perhaps the
greatest of all the abuses of our pen
sion system, says the Orego nian, is the
policy of granting pensions indiscrimi-
nately to widows. 1t is notorious that
the system offers al inducement to
young girls to marry old soldiers, in
the expectation that they will soon pass
away. as thousands do, leaving widows
who will draw pensions for life; and
| the records of the pension Office, from
old wars, show that many of these lives
are very long.
These women have done nothing
whatever to entitle them to gratitude
of the country. There are already
I thousands of such widows who were
born long after the war of the rebel-
lion; and unless the. law shall be
changed there is every probability and
prospect that thousands of women yet
unborn will be drawing pensions in
future years, some of them two or three
generations hence, as widows OF the
the soldiers of war that ended from a
third to half century before these
women were born.
No pension is moro gratefully paid
than that due to the widow who was
wife at the time of the war, who bore
the cruel anxieties Of the time and
kept the home aDd children while the
husband and father was absent, and to
which many husband and father
never returned; or to her, now widow,
who waited for the return of her
soldier boy from the front and then
became his wife. Pensions to these
have meaning; aud it is shame
that such pensions should be elassed
with others obtained through mercen-
ary traffic both in marriage and patriot
ism.
Congress ought to at once put stop
to policy which induces young girls
to marry aged men for whom they care
nothing, and whose names they take
in order TO become soldiers widows
and draw q pension for the rest of their
lives. OF this class of pensioners of
former wars many are still carried on
the pension rolls, and the records of
the pension office furnish proof of the
remarkable longevity of the class.
Sometimes, too, children come; and
then the pension is increased for their
support. Hence it is that, though the
old soldiers of the war of the rebellion
are passing away-for it Is thirty-two
years since the war closed-the
charges on account of pensions show
no diminution, but tendency still
rather to increase: and it Is the be-
lief of those who well understand the
subject that, vast as the total of the
pensions Low is, it will yet be in
creased by many millions.
1t is gratifying to note that this
abuse of the pension system has at.
tracted the notice of the present com.
missioner of pensions, and that he has
the courage to protest against its con.
tinuanee. He has been studying the
records of the pension Office, in order
to ascertain the probable effects of the
present policy, and concludes that
even 100 years from now women will
still be drawing pensions as widows
of soldiers of the war of tho rebellion,
unless congress shall take such action
as will forbid payment of pensions to
such as may hereafter marry soldiers of
this war. Widows of the soldiers-of the
war of 1872, and even of the Revolution,
are still on the pension rolls; and the
commissioner, supposing that the
lowest limit of age for a soldier in the
Revolutionary var was j. years, pro-
ceeds to figure out the age at which the
widows of these soldiers were married,
and the age of their husbands, as fol-
lows: "a soldier "a years old at the
beginning of the Revolution would
have been 3s years old in 1900, Now.
the youngest OF the Revolutionary
widows is SO. She was born In 1914.
At the date of her birth the youngest
of the revolutionary soldiers was 50.
If he married this woman when she
was Is, he was 10, There you have the
age conditions of matrimony not at all
unusual"
This sort of thing is going on all the |
time. and will contipue, unless con-
gress shall cut off widows of this class
from the list of pensioners. Unions
in marriage with old men entitled to
pensions have been and still are con-
>iyed for or by girls and young |
zen, who VIGOROUSLY have set them }
- bout the business of marrying /
men, expecting soon to be j
kthen TO have the pension !;
the names of widows In /,
u have been added to I
and other great !.