The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-02-06


Planned Out of 1t.
Copyright, 1898, by Frank G. Carpenter.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 81 spent two
hours recently travelling through the
pension office with the Hon. Henry Clay
Evans, the United States commissioner
of pensions | had asked Mr.. Evans
to give me some idea Of Uncle Sans
pension business, and together we
walked from bureau to bureau and Of
flee to office, asking questions OF the
officials in charge and gathering the
material which l give you in this let
ter. The commissioner has the office in
good business condition. He not only or
dered that everything be furnished me,
but he personally aided in my inVesti-
cations. The journey was no small
one. The pension office at Washington
. fills the biggest brick building Of the
world. l doubt that there has ever
been a building made of brick which
surpassed it in size although the baths
of Diocletian, the ruins OF which stand
by the Via Nazionale, in Rome, were
mile in circumference. This building
covers only two acres, but it is three
stories high and there is a big attic
up under its glass roof. 1t has a court
in it's center bigger than any barn yard
you have ever seen, and the huge brick
each contain enough brick to build
three good-sized houses.
Pension Files and Mail.
Both court and offices are filled with
papers. There are hundreds of mil
lions of pages of writing packed away
here. There are enough files in the
cases of the pension bureau court to
carpet a county. and the Old documents
among its records, if they could be
pasted together, in a single strip,
would be long enough to cover a wagon
road reaching clear around the world.
The pension office deals in big figures.
Take the mall for instance. 1t was
to this division the commissioner and L
first went The commissioner receives
10000 pieces of mail a day, or more
than 1000, 900 pieces every year. He
gets more than 5,000,00 letters in year.
If you could paste the answers to his
mail together in one single strip it
would make a ribbon of white letter
paper covered with typewriting reach
ing from New York to Chicago. If he
had to pay his postage at the rate of
2 cents per letter his stamp bill would
be over 100000 year, and, when you
figure up the labor and brains, you
would have a number of life times en-
bodied in that one item. 1t takes for
ty-three clerks to handle this mail.
There is one corps of men who do moth
Ing but open letters. Another stamps
the date of receipt upon them, and
third reads the letters and sends them
to the proper divisions for answer.
From 1000 to 5000 letters are answered
every day, and the correspondence in
creases from year to year.
KIOndiIe of Old Soldier.
Every one of these letters has
money end to it, The pension office is
the Klondike of the old soldier, and
not a few men and women who are
not old soldiers seek to pan gold out
Of the sands of its rivers. Last year
the amount of money distributed was
more than SAC, 600, 600. This was an in
crease of more than 100000 over the
sum paid out in 1896, and the commits
sioner tells me that there will be more
paid out this year than last. The gold
mines of the world are now producing
more than ever before, and still the
total output of them all is only about
5000 000, 900 a year. If the gold mines
Of all the world were run to their full
extent for the next ten years, they
could not get out as much gold as this
office has paid out for pensions on ac-
count of the War of the Rebellion. Up
to last June the amount was more than
100000, 600, showing steady increase
from the close of the war up until 1890
This sum is beyond conception, and, as
/ have stated, it is on the increase. 1t
amounts to so much now each year
that, if every man, woman and child
in the United States contributed 50, the
aggregate sum would just about pay
to about SO for every family in our
country. OF this over 100000 goes
abroad. Between 5000 and 1000 pen
s1onerS live in foreign countries and
draw their money from us. The re-
mainder are scattered over the Unit
ed States from Florida to Maine and
from Massachusetts to California and
the streams of money which flow here
and are damned up in the treasury
are turned into the great pension irri-
eating bitches every year and carry
this golden flood to all parts Of the
country.
Work of the Pension Office.
During our walk through the pension
office Commissioner Evans and myself
spent some time in each of the divi-
sions watching the hundreds of clerks
at work. There were old and young
men among them, and there were plen-
ty of old and young women. I asked a
number of questions as to the efficiency
of the employees, and was told that.
while most of them were very efficient
clerks, some were little good except to
Tic up p1pSIS. Olle HldH JOlO me the
poorest clerks he had were the old
schoolmaSters, and another said the
girls in his bureau were of less value
than the men. One chief of a division
said some of his best employees were
colored, and he pointed out young
man with a face as black as a piece
of camel coal, who, he said, could take
the heart out of a pension case quick
er than any man he had. There are
examiners and clerks scattered over
the country, so that, all told Com
missioner Evans has about 1000 men
under him-an army more than half as
large as that which Xenophon led on
his famous march to the sea- In one
doctors. These men pass upon the
medical testimony, and they can see
misstatement in the evidence if it is
not very carefully covered. All of them
have studied medicine, and not a few
of them have been active practition-
ers. Another division is largely made
up Of lawyers, who pass on the legal
aspect of certain cases, and another
might be said to be made up of deltec-
tives, for it is their business to ferret
out frauds.
A great part of the work of our con-
gressmen consists in pushing along
pension cases. There are now an aver
age of about 500 congressional calls
every day, and during the last four
days more than 1000 congressional APP
plications for information have been
received. Each of these necessitates
the looking up Of the papers in a GER
tain case.
One Pension Cases Meaning.
Since the close Of the war more than
R1oi Fr,,