Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1898-01-27

COS 62S, whereas my estimate is LILO ABB
In both calculations deserters are excluded.
Inclusive Of deserters, the grand total, as
reached by him, is ,167 1872 Using round
numbers for convenience, we may say that
there were, last June, 1,16s.0OO survivors,
including u, goo deserters
Hereafter I shall stand or fall by the
coloneTs figures He exhausted the SUBJ
1ect IN 1880, on congressional request. and
in April, 1896, after the most thorough re-
search carried on for years, with opportu-
mites and data eQualed by no other statis-
t1cian, he again reached the above con-
clus1on. We will never come nearer to the
truth of the matter Because his COM
handing position gives his opinion a high
value, which mine cannot have, l shall in
the future use his figures and conclusions.
These are his basic figures: Total number
OF men furnished during the war, PTS, 3O4.
That is nearly mathematically correct.
These men were credited to the respective
states, whose selfish jealousy would insure
their comparative accuracy. Total number
of Refreshments, 564 $3.50, leaving 2.213 .365
as the number of individual soldiers. The
weak spot in the whole matter is that of
the number Of Refreshments Unfortu-
nately, that is largely conjectural.
II the re-enliStments exceeded the above
estimates, or calculations then the number
OF survivors on July 1, 1865, and the pres
ent number must be correspondingly re-
duced. 1t does seem to me that If the War
Department should take 100000 of it's SOL
der cards and carefully analyze them. a
close approximate ton to the actual number
of re-enlistments would be reached. 1t is
not necessary to eat the whole ham to
judge of it's quality. Such an investiga-
ton would pay, giving the best possible
basis for future pension legislation, for
service pension law is among the certain
ties of the not far distant future. Deduct
from the number of individual enlistments
those who died during the war, and here
the ground beneath our feet is more solid,
and at close of that war we find l, .353
survivors (deserters excludeD. Include the
deSerters, and in round numbers, on July
l, 1865 there were $4,000 survivors After
that the work for actuaries is compare
lively easy and reliable especially
the census of 1890, in decennial periods.
gives the approximate ages of over 100000
soldiers tabulated therein, and what was
true of 100000 will be found equally pro-
portionably true of the whole army.
The correspondent of the New York
paper referred to asserts that, based on
the census Of 1880 and the last report of
the commissioner of PENSIONS the present
number of survivors Saying nothing about
the widows) is 72712 and that there are
1882 survivors now on the pension rolls,
or 6 405 more survivors on those rolls than
veterans living.
The Alleged Excess.
In addition to that there are ISL, 500 al
legged survivors who have flied pension
claims, making total Of 193.905 more
survivors" drawing or claiming pensions
than there are actual survivors. And he
is not much out of the way if the sur
vivors' tables in the census of 1880 be re-
liable
Most thoughtful persons would throw
aside the article, saying: wild! Sensa-
tional Impossblev' Now, the superin-
tendent of that census, no doubt. feeling
some official pride in UNFOLDING his own
work, steps in and vouches for it's reason
able accuracy and fixes the number of
survivors, June 30, 1897, at $4,000, nearly
100000 in excess of the claim of the New
York paper. Why this discrepancy be-
tween the two witnesses 1 cannot under
stand.
But will deal only with Mr.. Porters
figures. This is case where the indorser
alone gives value to the note. Assume
S24 900 as the correct number of survivors,
though he states that that may be an I'M
derestimate. The report of 1897 shows
that 733, J27 survivors of the rebellion are
now on the rolls, leaving something over
90,573 not drawing pensions. The leading
G. A. r. officials estimate that fully ten
per cent of the survivors have not and
will not apply for pensions. Prosperity,
official positions, pride, sentimental reasons
explain this. Their number will about alb
serb the 10000 unpenSioned survivors. Then
we face this question-There were on June
80, 1897, 1877, 500 alleged veterans applying
for. pensions. Today their numbers have
grown to 100000, and still the "scoundrels''
keep filing their claims. Either they
are scoundrels or there are 10000 men on
soldiers Is this believable? Can the lat
ter horn of the dilemma be true without
impugning the integrity or capacity of the
commissioners Of the last ten years? No
one who has ever had anything to do with
the adjustment of pension claims will give
credence to this Take the other horn of
this dilemma-2OO, 600 fraudulent claimants,
not claimants of the past, but living claim
ants. Is that believable? Do criminal an
nails show anything compared to such a
massing of. scoundrels? If all this leads
to a wide suspicion of the integrity Of our
soldiery, we cannot adopt the often repeat
ed charge of the south that our armies
were filled up with the scum of Europe,
and lay this villainy upon those foreignI
born soldiers. The Union army was an
American army. The statistics show that
SO out Of every 100 of our soldiers were
American born.
Admit the incompleteness of the census
of survivors taken in 1890, and the SUBJ
stantial accuracy of the estimates of Col.
Ainsworth, and all our difficulties disap-
pear. and, doubling not that there may be
few (and Commissioner Lochren found
very few cases of fraud marring our rolls
we can resume our work, glad to believe
that neither the veterans in particular nor
the American people in general have be-
come monumental raiders of the public
treasury. H. T. JOHNS,
January o. 1893. Pension Bureau.