The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-21
HIGH TIDE IN PENSIONS.

Two events, almost coinci | sqlt, coSfJjSE pei 8 somewhat Wearied attention again to the old subject of pensions. One i4 the irritated recalcitrance of 50 orth0x dox republican partisan as Congress.
 man Grosvenor under the continued exS travagant demands of the organized' veterans; the other is the passage by the House of representatives of the. pensions appropriation bill, which, 1t iss discovered, carries a total of littlaG more than a hundred and thirty-nirles and a half millions less than the appro- priations for the current year. On tllal strength of this there is renewed assure ance that the high tide in pension exsI penditures has been reached and
 passed, and that we may now look for~l ward to a gradual dininution of this item in the governments expense acr count. As there have been many simi-a lar assurances during the last twenty
 years which proved to be founded onE hopes rather than facts there must beD some natural hesitation in accepting as positive that which is now offered ue, yet present conditions do reolly give it
 more plausibility than it has had when heard before. sfNSk To say nothing of the disappearance
 of the last of the volunteers from the
 Federal military system, the thorough-3
 ness with which the veterans have
 prosecuted their claims and the inevi@
 table increase in the death rate among
 the survivors of our greatest war, thera
 is the very important fact of the coiilr
 ing into political power of a generation!
 that naturally looks with diminished ina
 terest on the events of 186165 and with
 great eagerness to the opening new erM
 in the development of the nation, whioh8
 involves large expenditures for purpose
 es that were unknown during the peri- -od when the expenditures for pensions
 grew to be the largest single item i'm
 the national budget. So long as the civil war was vivid and central fact in our contemporary history and while the men who shaped our national po1ity
 were those who had themselves, in most cases, participated in the struggle as
 members of the Union armies, it was
 but natural and perhaps inevitable that prodigal liberality to pensioners should be the corner stone as it were, of the national budget from year to year.
 Now all that is changed. The great
 majority of men in active life, both i'm < politics and in private life, know the civil war only as they read of it in his- tory or hear of it in the almost senile "reminiscences of decrepit veterans or < study it in official and cold statisticsL It does not appeal to them as it did to their fathers; they may think of it withl# l, ,,{e counts of the Revolution of the Ameri- can colonies or the Crusades into Pal~ estine; it's consequences to individuala participating in 1t lack the personal 1rls terest that was necessarily felt in them by their fathers. The men of to-day, i1s and out, are thinking mainly of the future of their country, that fu-Ss ture to which so different an aspect has been given by the unforeseen events ot the last four years, and beyond provid- ing decently for the unfortunate survi~ vors of a past era in our history, they are indisposed to spend large sums of money except on enterprises closely either in reality or in imagi- nation. with the new national develops ment that Is beginning. The govern- ment's millions in the next few years will be more readily and willingly vo- ted to ship subsidies and inter-oceanic canals and irrigation and cable lines than to the assistance of men whose active services to the nation were rem dered long ago and for whom already most liberal provision has been made.
 Perhaps it was some glimmering of of this influential fact that
 led Mir Grosvenor the other day to re-
 (Continued on Seventh Page)