Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-03-14
TANNERS HOT SHOT
Grand Army Chief Vigorously
 Upholds Veterans Cause.
ATTACKS SALARY REDUCTION BILL.

Defends Comrades of Civil War.
 "These Stood For Union and That 1 Congress should Meet at Wash- 1 ington, Not at Richmond" WASHINGTON, March IA Corporal Tanner, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, has writ ten letter to Representative James A. Tawney of Minnesota, chairman of the house committee on appropriations, protesting vigorously against the ac- tion of MT. Tawney's committee in rec ommending the enactment of law re ducing the compensation of govern ment clerks after they have attained the age of sixty-five years. Corporal Tanner writes particularly in behalf of his comrades of the civil war.
 Corporal Tanner ventures the asser- tion to Mir. Tawney that you won't find a Confederate soldier behind your bill' and incidentally pays a tribute to Confederate brigadier who refus- ed to permit single one of the Union veterans to be disturbed when he had the power to remove them.
 ''So far as indicated by anything in the report continued Corporal Tanner, "this recommendation came from the full committee on appropriations, yet were the same rule to be applied to those in high as well as low places three members of your committee would have been debarred from sign ing it. The distinguished speaker of the house, so active that many people fear he must be reckoned with in 1908, would have to. withhold his approval unless you hurry the bill through be- fore May ', while of the thirteen mem- bers of the senate committee on ap- propriations, who have the last guess at this bill east of the White House whose average age is sixty-seven. all but four, two Democrats and two Re- publicans, and they by tight squeeze, would be excused from consideration of your automatic time register upon it's arrival at the northern wing of the capitol.
 | "The operation of the proposed pen alty for loyal and faithful service would fall so heavily upon those who bore the burden of the battle in the Union army that I must treat it as if they were the sole beneficiaries. It is for them, my comrades. speak. I am indisposed to shirk this duty I owe to them and could not if would.
 They stood with me, when to stand meant victory then, that the congress of the United States should meet ever since and now in Washington instead of Richmond; that the stars and stripes should fioa. forever and day over all, emblematic of a united, prosperous, happy country.
 You propose that the almshouse alone shall be the veterans refuge in life and perhaps after you've kicked him out to rattle his bones over the stones will deny him burial in 'conse- crated ground. close against him the gates of Arlington.
 According to the best estimates we can make. 750,OO0 of the Union army are now living. Providence has blessed these men with vast aggregation of sons and sons-in-law, and I cannot be far out of the way when I assert that the survivors of the vanishing army and their allied domestic relations az gregate nearly or quite 100000 adults In this land. Few of this number but directly or indirectly would be affected by the proposed legislation.
 You may pass this unjust, cruel. nonstrous law while the stars remain in the flag and the memories of men and women are not stricken with pare sis, but before you do I hope you'll hear Whitcomb Riley recite 'Goodby, Jim: Tek Ker O Yourself
 This letter Is. of course. you under stand. wholly impersonal. happen to he the official representative of my comrades. as are you of the powerful committee that, like the hand that rocks the world dominates the affairs of the nation.
 "I write not in anger. but in deep sorrow, for it is my country and my comrades with whom I've long since touched elbows in whose name tiiis great wrong is being done. They counted not the cost during the great struggle In the civil service. as in the army or navy. it Is the man behind the gun upon whom we lean most heavily, who fights the battles. who does the things that get into general orders un- der some one else's name. But what would we do without hImT
 This subject is one by which the very emphasis Of our declining years stands closer to the representatives of the vanishing army than any other obligation on earth except to our God and country. shall be parioned.