Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-04-26
The seventy-Year Bill and Pensions

The New York Sun notes The Stars COM
ments on the Gillet bill, to dismiss all gov
ernment clerks who have reached the age
of seventy. and seems to find cause for
alarm in this papers declaration that the
nroposed enactment would be surprising
and distressing If sunaccompanied by any
form of service pension propositlon' SUCH
as the cler..s themselves have for years
been asking for legislation to enable them
to put into execution" Thereupon the
Sun says:
cit is the surprising and distressing
nature of the case that gives strength 10
the belief that the main object OF the re-
trement proposition is to force the aoop-
ton of a civil pension law, rather than 10
clear the public service OF incompetent
employees. 1t is not true that all men ana
women at seventy years are 1ncapacltateo
for clerical work, but it is true that the
task of justifying before the public a civil
pension bill would be comparatively easy
If a number of worthy persons suddenly
deprived of the means OF livelihood IN
their old age could be paraded before the
nation as an argument in its favor. If
Congress passes the retirement Dill the
civil pension bill will be enacted in burst
of sympathetic hysteria, without proper
discussion or consideration. Under the plea
of relief for the clerks unnecessarily and
harshly excluded from the service and
prevented. through no fault of their own,
from earning living, system of old
age pensions for all sui ordinate employees
will be rushed through Congress and
adopted by the government without under
going that careful scrutiny that its i'm
portance demands. AS establishing rule
by which to determine the fitness of a per-
son for clerical employment the retire
ment bill is merely ridiculous. AS the thin
edge of a civil pension wedge it is dis
tinctly dangerous measure"
The Star has never urged the enactment
of any form of civil pension law on the
basis of either the governments or the
clerks provision of the funds. 1t does
not today believe that the Gillet bill was
advanced for the purpose of furthering
this enterprise in either phase. But it
does believe, and has so stated from the
outset of this latest agitation of the ques-
ton. that 1t would be monstrously unjust
for the government to dismiss the clerks
of more than seventy years without estab-
fishing some form of pension. The clerks
themselves realize as a body that there
is no hope at present for a government
maintained civil pension fund, and they
are also body advocates of the estab-
lishment of a fund contributed by them
selves only an expedient to protect
them from just such threats of arbitrary
dismissal that embodied in the Gillet
bill
The clerks can well afford to regard the
case in its present state complacently if,
as the Sun suggests, this pending bill is
too ridiculous to be passed. But it cannot
be doubted that the broachng of the SUBJ
| ject in the form of this measure with a
| unanimous report from the committee, has
caused the elder government workers great
distress. Probably not a man in the pub
lie service today believes that the trainers
and advocates of the bill in Congress have
the least shadow of an idea that 1t will
lead to the creation of some form of civil
| pension fund.