Overview

On Tuesday, December 12th last, the anticipated occurred. The so-called Sherwood or Dollar-a-day pension bill, referred to and discussed in the following papers, was acted upon as the earliest considerable measure taken up at the first regular session of the Sixty-third Congress; and that by a Democratic National House of Representatives pledged to an economical expenditure, wise, efficient and effective. The vote stood 229 yeas, against 92 nays. The character of the debate, and of the speeches which preceded the taking of the vote, is elsewhere referred to. Sentimental to the last degree, it was neither creditable in tone nor in accordance with the ascertained facts of history. The pension disbursements in the year 1910-11 because of the Civil War amounted approximately to $150,000,000. Since the close of that war an aggregate of four thousand million dollars has been disbursed from the National Treasury, pensions paid because of physical injuries sustained, or services rendered, or alleged to have been rendered, in that struggle. Should the Sherwood Dollar-a-day bill become a law, it is estimated by the Pension Bureau that a further amount of $75,000,000 a year will be added to that disbursed in 1910-11, or an increase of fifty per cent. And this, forty-seven years after Appomattox! Under the coming allotment the country is to be parceled out for the next ten years into 435 congressional districts. In each of these districts in 37 States, an average sum of $400,000 will be annually disbursed under already existing legislation. Should the Dollar-a-day bill become a law, this annual disbursement will be further increased by $200,000. In each of the districts in the States referred to, there is now an average of 2600 recipients of pensions. The natural political result of such conditions at once suggests itself. The subject matter discussed in the! following paper is momentous, reaching down as it does to the very base of our American institutions - the purity of the constituencies. The fast developing pension system is nothing more nor less than the initial step in what will, and at no remote day, surely become an established policy of general bribery and corruption. At present, in dealing with the subject, members of Congress and others are either short-sighted or foolish enough to say that, though the amount expended is large, and steadily increases, it will be but for a brief time. In ten years the Veterans will all, or nearly all, be dead; the thing will then stop of itself.....

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9781700915900

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