The National tribune., 1900-02-22
TIE MERCILEss CRUELTY OF DELAY.

THE MEkClLESS CRUELTY oF DELAY
If the sum OF all the suffering endured
by veterans and their widows since Presi-
dent Cleveland ordered The beginning of
the perversion of the pension laws could be
expressed in words, it would appall the
Nation. 1t would dreadful aggregate
of wantonly-nfiicted needless misery
not equalled since Andersonvilla. The
difficulty in making the people realize
this lies in the way of having them fully
comprehend that, unlike other public
creditors, the veterans and their widows
are suffering from incurahle ailments and
disabilities. that their little pensions are
vitality important to them for food, medicine,
clothing, fire and shelter; that denying
them these is actual robbery of old, worthy
and needy people of the actual necessarieS
Of life. and that this is robbery that never
can be atoned for by any future payment.
| The poor, disabled veteran suffers to-day
for want of food, medicines, fire and shelter.
| No payment tomorrow, or next year can
compensate him for what he has suffered
to-day. Next year he will probably be in
his grave. No flowers strewn on his grave.
no fervid eulogies of Memorial Day orators
will then compensate him for the pangS
of hunger that might have been stayed,
assuaged, the warmth and cheer that
hight have Transformed his chill, COM
fortress abode, the hope that might have
come to his saddened heart
When we take a typical case of this
kind-take one of a man who can be found
in any little neighborhood, and whom all
his neighbors know-a man who served
his country faithfully, who was with his
company every time it was called for duty,
who forgot his own pleasures, wishes,
comforts, and pains and aches, even, to
take his place in ranks and help accomplish
whatever was asked, and who on account
of the drafts then made on his youthful
strength and vitality. is now prematurely
old and keenly suffering. but whom. the
Pension Bureau, from some cunning
technicality or another, denies the meager
allowance the laws grant-when we take
his known needs and miseries, and multi
ply them by the 477.239 claims reported by
the Commissioner to be pending June 80,
1899. and by the 1O7 900 ejections last year
we get an aggregate of human misery and
official injustice for which there is no other
word than appalling"
1t represents more acute suffering than
was ever caused by Mississippi floods, or
Kansas grasshoppers, the Chicago fire,
calamities which have stirred the public
heart to its depths
And this thing has been going on for
seven long years. Cleveland and Lochren
iuaugurated it by their cruel anu wicked
perversion OF the laws passed by Congress
for the relief of these cases, and TO give the
soldiers Of the Nation that which the Govern
ment had contracted to give them when
they enlisted. For four years the veterans
endured Lochren's injustice, while 16O 900
veterans died, and the Republican news
papers and orators made the country ring
with denunciations of the Commissioner s
wrong-doing, and promises TO right his
iujustices if given the opportunity. In
1896 the vote of the people gave them tie
opportunity, and in 1897 Henry Clay Evans
was intrusted with the duty of undoing
as far as he could the evil wrought by Loeb
ten. He could do nothing for tie Loo, 900
who had died-he could not give them the
nece ssaries and comforts of which their
dying beds had been robbed by his pre-
decessors, but he could save those who yet
lived from dying as they did. He did
nothing of the kind. He has not mitigate
a single harsh feature of Lochren's wrongs
to the veterans and their dependent ones,
and we challenge any of his defenders and
apologists to say that he has. Since he
came into Office 15O 900 mere veterans have
died.
Now, when and how is relief to come?
That is the burning question. Things
that We're intolerable under Lochren's
administration have become still more so
Under Evans's, if for no other reason than
that the veterans are all much older. and
that their sufferings and needs increase in
geometrical ratio with the advance in
years. Congress has been in session
nearly three months. and has done nothing,
apparently contemplated nothing in the
way OF substantial relief. There is only
one way in which relief can come: That is
the removal Of the present Commissioner.
and the substitution Of another who will
execute the pension laws according to their
real intent and purport.
VIII this be done?