The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1902-08-28
"a MILLION PENSIONERS"

The editor of the Waterbury Comm
Republican has written an editorial under
this caption, of which he Is so Unfortunately
proud that he has typewriter under it,
Exchanges please copy" We shall do
So 1t is as follows:
Congress has been running n race with
death and Congress has won. The civil
WAR pensioners are now dying at a rapid
rate. and yet the pension list is increas-
ing. Thirty-seven years after the close
of the war there were more pensioners
than ever before. The number lacks only
Oh of being a round million. This was
an increase of 1927 since 1899. The ex-
perts say that it is the high-water mark,
and that from now on the increasing
death rate will decrease the pension list.
This has been predicted each year for the
past 20 years, but each time Congress
has rallied to the rescue of the list and
added more names than death could take
off.
AT the last session 1000 bills were
enacted granting pensions in cases to
which our most liberal pension laws could
not be stretched and general laws were
passed which will add 10000 new names
to the long roll. The experts estimate
with confidence n constant decrease in the
say that at least 10000 pensioners will
die during the next year. The increasing
death roll of the veterans is pathetic. but
the death of n pensioncr does not always
stop the pension. We believe there are
one or two Revolutionary war pensions
still paid. or were within the last four or
five years, although the youngest possible
soldier of that war. if he were living now,
would be something like 135 years old
The last of them died many years ago,
but the widows kept on signing the pen
sion roll 1t was long regular business
enterprise for INSCRIPTIONS young women
to hang around soldiers homes and induce
aged and decrepit or feeble minded pen
sioners to marry them. so that they could
draw widows pensions, perhaps for the
next 30 years.
1.-The taxpayers of this country are now
paying nearly half a million dollars every
day in the year. exclusive of Sundays, to
those who fought for the Union. to tens
of thousands who did not fight and never
smeiled powder, to thousands who desert
ed and fed to places of safety, and to
thousands of widows of all these classes.
Nothing has happened to cause any rea-
sonable expectation of any decrease in
this burden. In the exigency of politics
and in the hunt for votes. Congress can
be trusted TO keep the ranks full"
So there's the editorial which he is try
ing to palm off as the product of his brain
and which he proudly wishes Exchanges
please copy"
Bless his unsophisticated, nickel-platcd
Waterbury soul, the Copperhead exchanges
have been copying that very editorial-or
rather stealing it from one another-fOr
the past 81 years. 1t is one of the stock
articles of that class of papers. 1t has
been passed from one to another, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific and back again, no
telling how many times.
Every time one of those editors has
seen a veteran get an Office he wanted;
Or veterans chickens have, scratched
up his fresh-made garden;
Or a veteran has thrown up to him that
he was TOO cowaflly or selfish to go into
the army;
Or a veterans son has thumped his son,
he has hunted up that editorial, and spite
fully published it. He may have changed
it little. He may have aggravated its
vention; he may have made it still more
ungrammatical, but it is essentially the
same old balderdash, with the same old
sentences and wording, the same old false
premises and perverted conclusions.
Our Waterbury friend may rest as
sured that certain of his Exchanges will
copy" The editorial is even now on the
hook in a number of country offices, ready
to be fired off as their own, the moment
the veterans of the neighborhood do some
thing that they do not like.