The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-10-25
VAST SUMS IN PENSIONS
THREE DIlLroN DOLLARS SINCE
 THE UNION WAS BOUNDED.
Disbursements u2 to the Close of the Owl War Now Equallsd by those for Right MeAtks of One Year --Interesting Facts from the
 Records of the Pension

| T V. l cubic foot of coinage gold is worth
 $s@.NI.&. Pension Commissioner Ware has computed that the outlay for pen.
 sions since the foundation of the Gov,
 ernment. If met in gold, would make ar opeiisk 10 feet square and 108 feet high
 This illustration perhaps gives an idea ol what three billion dollars means; . bH lion ordinarily expresses something ol
 which the human mind has little com | prehension. ,-.4s r. Y, It is worthy of, note that the total cost
 of the pension system from the founda,
 ton of the Government 10 June 90, 1865
 or until the civil war was itself over, 6 period of three-quarters of a century
 amounted to only $s6,0oo. GOO or the pres. ent Embarrassment for eight months and
 nine days. This is an example of the
 masnitude of modern operations. Pen. sions for the Revolutionary war have cost up to date only s7o.o0o0oo. and as there are only i've Revolutionary pen. eioners now on the roll, the chapter Is nearly closed. This Revolutionary total represents about six months' expenditure today. v The war. of 1912. which has continued as an active charge until the present time
 has cost only $4s,ooo.eoo. Its pensioners inciude one participant and eleven hun dred and fifteen widows Were the 1s12 pensioners to have a reunion. poor Hiram Cronk of Ava. Oneida county, N. r., would be rather lonesome among so many women He is now 1o3 years old. The last survivor of the Revolution died in 1869, at the age of 1os. It may be regarded as a general truth
 in pension records that the widows last thirty years longer than the participants or any war By widow. should generally De understood In pension nomenclature all ependents-everybody except actual par
 tcipants. For the war of 1872, however. practically all of the dependents carried on the roll are actually widows.
 During the last year the number of civil war participants on our rolls fell off near
 " forty thousand, while the number of civil war widows increased by 24.6s1. This
 shows that wives are younger than their
 husbands more often than older, and also
 that cur pension laws operate to put
 something of premium upon the young
 woman's marrying the old soldier. many years her senior. Commissioner Ware
 recommends in his recent report, as have
 several of his. predecessors, that a law be
 passed to prevent the granting hereafter of pensions to the woman who marries a l soldier after he has become a pensioner Shis would permit the veteran who draws
 no pension to marry. and, on dying, to
 leave his widow eligible to a pension but
 1t would cut off the inducement to marry old soldiers near the end of their lives for the sake of their pensions
 The Unknown Army.
 The average age of participants of the war for the Union is now sixty-three years. The question Is constantly asked, | How many survivors of the civil war re-
 main unpensioned. exclusive of deserters This subject has been carefully investi- gated by Thomas D. Yeager, Commis-
 sioner Wares private secretary. with re- suits which will occasion some surprise. He believes that the number of survivors | of the war of the rebellion on June 3O | 1903. was SeA,S6s, or in round numbers about 900000. The number of these who
 are drawing pensions Is 7o3, 456. leaving
 about 100000 from whom future additions
 to the roll may be drawn. Special tests
 have been made of the ratio of pension CTS to survivors on e small scale. with
 about these results. Of the E04 soldiers employed in the Pension Bureau 401 are pensioners 1t has been computed that 2i t per cent of the numbers now on the roll would be added by a Service Pension act
 exclusive. of course, of the few persons who would refuse to accept it. From this
 contingent, which has not yet asked for l a pension under the liberal laws already
 existing, N.0O0 a year are now coming i in.
 Those who served in the civil war but
 are not on the pension roll, have been
 very properly described by Commissioner Ware as the unknown army" He esti.
 mates that it will lose per cent by
 death during the coming year. If to this
 number be added the 140O0 who enter the
 known army by getting on the roll, it's
 membership will be reduced by 23.Ooo | Hence. if the pension laws remain un- changed, this unknown army" will be
 reduced to 60000 by 1908, and in ten years | will cease to be 0 factor altogether;
 Doubtless If the individual stories were
 related of the members of this unknown | army, giving the reasons why they have
 gone along year after year without a | pension, when most of their associates
 have one, 1t would form a credkable | showing. Almost any man of sixty years
 has some inhrmity fairly assignable tc
 military service and so can get a pension l and yet nearly POI, 900 such men have not
 received any such aid. It Is interesting to note for how long a
 time the pension roll has lowered about
 the million line. including. of course, wid-
 ows and dependents, as we'll as partici- pants. Eleven years ago Commissioner Raum in his report suggested that the | number of pensioners would ultimately
 reach one million. It has never done SC
 on the SOth day of June of any year. when
 the tabulation for the official records is | made, and probably never will. and yet
 at the close of four of the months of last
 year 1t exceeded that figure. On the last | day of June. 1902 the number of pension | CTS stood at 999, 446. In a month 1t had