The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-10-15
ANOTHER BAILEY BLuxDER.

In the speech which Leon Bailey printed
in the Sentinel as that delivered in Edin-
burg, but which he did not deliver in that
town, he says:
BY a bill of his own authorship he (Mr
Overstreet has taken from the soldier the
option to receive his pension check at head
quarters. as has been the custom. or to have
1t sent by mail, as the soldier may prefer
so that II is now arbitrarily mailed to some
specific street address and in many cases re-
suits in delay, inconvenience and hardship.
That is a very stupid story. Mr. Over
street secured the passage of a bill requir
ing all pensions to be paid by checks mailed
to the postoffice of pensioners, and the
measure urged by the Grand Army 1t
had it's origin with Wadsworth Post, of
Franklin, Johnson county. In preamble
the evils of issuing checks at the pension
Office were set forth, and by resolution the
passage of the bin which Mr.. Overstreet
presented and looked after in Congress was
requested The resolutions adopted by
Wadsworth Post were unanimously ap-
proved by the encampment of the depart
ment held in Muncie in April. 1895, and were
subsequently approved by the pension COM
mittee of the National Encampment and
affirmed by that body.
There are as few men of Incorporate
habits among the veterans of the war for
the Union be found in large a
number of men who were not in the Union
service. but in a pension list of seventy
thousand names, like that in this city, there
are naturally several hundred men who are
the victims of alcoholic appetite. Such men
would come here, get their checks and fall
into the hands of the runners of dives un-
der promise of having their checks cashed.
They would either waste their money or be
robbed. All sorts of sharpers were after
pensioners; they got feeble, old men into
their hands and robbed them of a part of
their money while pretending to help them
get their checks cashed The police were
always lenient to the inebriated pensioner
but after pay day quite number had to be
arrested for helpless inebriation. The evil
was so great that the veteran organizations
in this city employed at the time of every
payment a special force of their comrades
to look after the feeble and those liable to
lose their money in dives. A dozen men
were thus, for several years, under the pay
of comrades three or four days during the
quarterly payments. The reports of those
in charge of this special force showed that
the evil increasing. Sober, but feeble,
men, excited and bewildered, lost their
money while in the hands of pretended
friends. The members of this force looked
after all such cases, and, as far as possible,
saw that the pensioners were not victimzed.
At every payment scores of men were taken
out of dives into which they had been led.
At the time the bill was under considera-
ton the pension agents were Democrats,
but all but two of them heartily approved
the measure.
Very naturally, few pensioners who
desire to spend their money in dissipation,
instead of using it to support themselves
and families, do not like the law. The
keepers of low dives, three-card- monte men,
the operators of skin games and small
sharpers and thieves generally are indig-
nant that the checks OF pensioners are not
paid in such a manner that they can rob
the pensioner Leon Bailey has made him.
self the champion of that element in his
hot zeal to assail Mr. Overstreet.