The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-04-22
PeualOn g.

Pensions.
 To the Editor of the Journal and Couller
 There are a great many old soldiers residing within the circulation or your valuable paper, and they might be ln-
 terested in this reply to your editorial } on "Pensions' in last Saturdays issue,
 although they may not agree in all
 that I say. You quote Commissioner
 Evans as saying "he did not think that
 the soldiers themselves were as much
 to blame for this flood of applications
 (41.0o0 alone from the Spanish War) as
 were the pension agents"
 If Commissioner Evans did think in
 place of mot think he would make
 true instead of misleading state ment. I was connected with the pen
 sion bureau for thirteen years in cler- cal capacity, and know something Of it's business methods, and of holes in the pension laws that need stopping up. In the first place the law prescrlbes
 who shall be eligible for pensions based, first, on disability, the origin of which must be shown and the continuance
 passed upon and clearly verified by
 board consisting of three surgeons, not
 at Washington but in the location of | the applicants home.
 New, if a soldier has no disability he | had better try to break into a bank
 than to try to break into the United | States treasury through the pension bu-
 reau, especially while Commissioner
 Evans is on guard there. In the next
 place these sharks of pension agents,
 for sharks they literally are, some of i them, are not fools, but keen, shrewd
 men with an eye to business and the l main chance-prosecuting successfully | claims clearly allowable under the law. The kind of soldiers they solicit are those who have a claim, and not those who have none. Nine times out of ten
 a pension agent has to take up claim and prosecute 1t at his own expense, trusting to a successful issue for reim- bursement. It is a rule with them not to waste their sweetness on the desert
 air." Where the claim agent gets his nefarious work in is when the claim Is eventually allowed and eventually of ten means a long time, when there is bill against the poor impecunious sol- dier for aff1davits, postage, etc, that "don't do thing to the soldiers first payment but eat the best part of it up.
 Much ado is made by this watch dog" of the pension bureau (Evans) about soldiers filing claims through more than one agency. No soldier ever filed two claims in this way but after the rejection of his claim, or the seem ing neglect of a claim agent, soldiers have been known to file a second claim with second attorney, having mdre or less faith in the justice of their claim for pension. IT these soldiers knew that by filing their claims direct with the pension bureau, or through the ad- jutant general of their own state, and that the employment of an agent was handicap, especially with Commissioner Evans, they would become their own claim agents, thereby saving the fees and expediting their claims.
 Commissioner Evans has not saved $5,- 100000 or five cen, to the government, but if he has stopped the payment of | any monies it has been of those that some poor soldier, widow, parent or de- pendent was entitled to, and should not be kept out of by the intricacies of the | law which this man is enabled to use in his decisions" and rulings" Com 1 missioner Evans has no more to do with [ the adjudication of pension claim than 1 Aguinaldo, for 1t is all done by the clerical force of the bureau, even to the | signing of the pension certificate and 1 the check for payment, but he can sit in his office and give interviews to newspaper men as to the abuses and extravagant practices of the pension system.
 | The people of the country at large who are shocked at our enormous Sex penditures for pension are not to be blamed for thinking as they do. that Commissioner Evans is doing a noble. patriotic and unpopular work in trying r to stop this drain upon the treasury. but the soldiers who have been voted pensions by congress for disabilities n- cured either in service or since, know they are not receiving justice at the hands of Commission Evans
 The law and the law alone is to blame Tor all the extravaganza and devious ways of what Is called pension grab oing''
 At the breaking out of the civil war he highest pension for an enlisted man vas $8 month The politicians, to se- ,ure enlistments and votes, began a systematic grading up of pensions un- il SIP per month became the maximum. There are pensions of S100 per month oaid, but they are not under the gener- ) Il law. As a reward for patriotism the ' cale would, probably, never have gone -bove SIP per month, but as bid for sol l Her votes Republicans and Democrats [ ried to outbd each other, and in their cal they thought SIP per month was f lot too much for the maximum disabil- ( ty. [ At the breaking out of the Spanish var posters gaily colored were stuck