Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1884 — PENSION APPROPRIATIONS. [ARTICLE]

PENSION APPROPRIATIONS.

Why the Claim Agents Thrive and Grow Fat. [Washington Special to New York Tribune.] As there are constantly new schemes for increasing the pension lists and the payments to pensioners, the following statement of the annual appropriations made for pensions from and including 1871 to and including 1884 will interest many persons. The amounts are taken from the annual reports of the Treasury Department, every dollar of which represents the earnings of a day's work; 1 Amount Amount Year, appropriated. Year* appropriated. 1871 .$ 30,000, 0j 1878 .$ 28,533,000 1872 33,65.1,000 1879 29,872,030 1873 30,480,000 1880 66,200,078 1874 30,480,000| 1881..... 41,646,366 1875 29,950,000! 1882.. 68,282,396 1876 30,000,000:1883 116,000,600 1877 29.533,600:1884 86,676.287 It will be Hoticed that from 1871 to 1878, both years inoluded—that is for nine years of the period—the pension appropriations ran with much regularity at about $30,000,000 a year, getting down to $28,500,000 in 1878, the last yoar of the great industrial depression. In 1879 the general revival of prosperity began. In 1880 the pension appropriation jumped up to nearly double that of 1878, through the appropriation of $25,000,000 in a lump sum for so-called arrears of pensions. Since then the increase nus been very great, and the olalmagents have reaped a very rich harvest. These gentry are still at work stirring tip movements for new pension laws for the robbery of the tax-payers and additional appropriations. They are a class soarcely known in Washington until a year or two before the passage of the first arrears act.