The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-07-31
SEE CHANGE
IN POLICY
Will Republicans
Abandon Old
Soldiers.
DEMOCRATS SEE
NEW PLAN MADE
Evans Sickles Controversy the Text
for a Declaration of the
Belief.

/ The controversy over the retirement
/ from his office of Pension Commission
er Henry Clay Evans, of Tennessee, at
/ the demand of the Grand Army of the
| Republic, has caused SO much COM
ment that the following article from
the Washington correspondence of the
Philadelphia Record (Democratic), may
give some light upon the drawing of
the lines:
Keen observers begin to perceive
more in the Sickles-EVans incident
than mere sparring for spoils or the
unwilling of an unsavory election bar
gain. The opinion is gaining ground
| that the Republican party, under the
careful pilotage of the Mckinley ad-
ministration, is making ready to aban-
| don its old-time pension policy.
| a veteran politician of the Central
| West, and once a Republican leader of
| note, today expressed that conviction,
and predicted to a group of Washington
newspaper men that at no distant day
/ the Republican leaders viii De round
actually advocating the repeal OF all
/ pension laws.
You laugh incredulousIy, 1 see, he
remarked, yet l am very close to the
truth Ten years ago you would have
| Deen just as lQcfeQulOuS naQ #eonyDOdy
told you that the Republican party
would ever abandon the cause of the
negro. The signs that it would do so
We're already quite apparent in the sec
| ond Harrison campaign, and now we
see that it has practically put itself
in accord with the once obnoxious
Mississippi plan of ACKNOWLEDGMENT,
or, at all events, has ceased to worry
over the suppression of the black mans
vote.
NOT MANY REAL SOLDIERS LEFT.
twenty-five years ago it was trea-
son to Republicanism to hint that the
policy of the party toward the old SOL
! diers was an eXtravagant and wasteful
one, or that there was any such thing
as pension sharks or pension frauds.
/ The country could not do too much for
the old boys who had saved the Union.
How is it now? There is a very differ
ent tone regarding this pension ques-
ton. The enormous aggregate pay
ments to the old soldiers are being
| viewed with misgivings by many
| stanch Republican partisanS, while
others are openly criticising indiscrimi-
nate pensions. The language of the
| Republican press today on pensions
| would have broken up the party In 1889.
Two decades ago nobody dared to
question the pension policy of the gov
| eminent as laid down by the Republi
! cans. Now it is openly antagonized by
/ hundreds of Republican leaders in all
/ quarters, and almost solidly by the
metropolitan press.
| "All this, mind you, is as yet being
done almost covertly. All still bland
ly talk about the honest and deserving
! pensioner; nobody apparently disputes
! that the good soldier should have
pension if the law says so, and so on.
! 1t is only the frauds and sharks who
are devouring the national substances.
| Meanwhile the enornity of the $145,-
100000 annually going to the army or
! pensioners is eternally enlarged upon
| by the organs of the coming change.
| 1t is having the sinister effect design
ed.
Pretty soon, as in the case of In
dams, all the good soldiers will be dead
ones The Republican pension policy
has ceased to be drawing card, and
it will eventually go, just as the siren
uous Republican policy toward the
| freedman has gone.
i "The very fury with which General
Sickies has been attacked by the thick
i and-thin administration organs ought
/ TO show YOU what is coming It is GER
tain that the Republican committee
/ sought out the professional soldier
, leaders and plead with them to go out
4 and pacify the veterans when the
great scare occurred last fall about
the soldier vote in Ohio, Indiana and
Illinois.
i SOLDIER VOTE LESS DANGEROUS.
1.-THE Mckinley managers deceived
the old soldiers in 1896 with promises of
an open door policy if he was elected.
The administration was compelled to
shuttle out of the promises made then
by Alger, Sickles and Tanner because
it discovered that public opinion was
against further pension extravaganza.
Then. too, there was a growing belief
that the soldier vote had ceased to be
dangerous even if it was not right.
i. Understand me: There is no change
in the pension system itself; the prin-
eiple is the same now as it was twenty
or thirty years ago. and the principle
is right and patriotic in my opinion.
There are not so many pension sharks
now as then. Nobody is now getting
rich by securing pension claims for
soldiers. whereas then large fortunes
kwere rolled up in that business here in
washington. What Republican news
paper would have dared to attack Sick
les and Tanner then as they have been
attacked now? Why the change?
"The Republican party wants the
Dension money for their army, for the
army retired list. Every army officer
is a deadly hater of the pension list.
am HAWAIIAN RITE.