The National tribune., 1910-02-03
THE NATIONAL TRIBUNE BILL.

Tho we have very faint expectation
of the present session of Congress pass
ing any part of The National Tribune
pension bill, our faith in that measure
and it's ultimate success has not abated
one jot or title. 1t is a measure of
such eminent justice that it cannot help
being eventually enacted into law by
Congress, and we shall keep it to the
fore as we have done other bills in the
past until success is attained. The sense
of justice and gratitude in the people
toward those who made all of the pres
ent prosperity possible will insist so
strongly that these veterans and their
widows shall be made as comfortable
as possible in their age and decrepitude
as to impel Congress to the legislation
involved in the passage of The National
Tribune pension bill. In every COM
munity in the North, East and West
are veterans who gave everything to
the country, who sacrificed their young
manhood and their prospects in life to
save the Nation in its hour of direst
peril. The histories of these men and
of the widows they have left are mat
ters of common knowledge to every
body in the community, and the COM
munity will not be satisfied as long as
these worthy objects are suffering for
the ordinary comforts of life, while this
great Nation goes on filling its Golfers
with unnumbered millions from its
abundant wealth.
The people everywhere will say that
the Panama Canal, the reclamation
work, the improvement of the Western
waterways and other public works of
great utility can wait or have the bur-
den of their execution laid in some
measure upon the generations which
are to receive the most benefit from
them. The veterans and their widows
cannot wait They must be taken care
of now The swift years are taking
them, not by hundreds or thousands,
but by armies out of the reach of the
Nations gratitude and justice, and it
will be an ineffable shame if they are
allowed to pass away Iamenting the
they did for it, Z Before the whole bill
can now possibly pass there will have
disappeared from. the pension roll an
army twice as great as that with which
Grant captured Vicksburg. three times
as great as that which fought at Shi-
ed at Stone River. An army will have
marched into the Eternal Camps be-
yond the Great River larger than Grant
and Meade led thru the awful storm
and stress of the Wilderness.
There are no veterans to come upon
the roll to replace these which death is
daily taking from it by the hundred
Under the vicious system of Henry Clay
Evans tab was kept on the graveyards,
and every applicant for a pension was
kept waiting until some one died and
made a place for him. This can be done
no longer. Commissioner Warner
cleaned up the docket and allowed PEN
siOns TO substantially every man who
was eligible. When he retired from
Office he left only 4,77S original claims
pending, and new applications are COM
ing in so slowly as to show that the end
has been reached, and there can be no
practical additions except from the wild
ows. These widows are dying off al
most as rapidly as their husbands, as
they are in general women of the same
age. The pensioners must rapidly de-
crease, and with this decrease comes
far more tender care to the minds of
the people for those who are left. We
saw this illustrated in the cases of the
survivors of the Wars of the Revolu-
ton, Of 1912 and with Mexico. These
had to undergo the same slings and ar
rows of outrageous Copperheadism that
We of the war of the rebellion have
painfully experienced, but as the years
went by the temper of the people grew
far more gracious, and mudslinging at
the veterans received less encourage
ment. To-day, while the pension ex-
penditures are confessedly heavy, peo-
PIE are daily coming to regard them as
the legitimate debt, as the proper price