Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1887 — Time to Draw the Line. [ARTICLE]

Time to Draw the Line.

Last year Cleveland’s heroic veto alone stood between the depletion of the Treasury and the dependent pensions bill; this year the country looks to Congress to stand the brunt of the profligate scheme to distribute the surplus. Never in the history of nations has there been such generosity shown to the defenders of their country as is exhibited in the pension legislation and pay-roll of the United States. The proverbial ingratitude of a republic has been grandly refuted. The annual sum paid for pensions in the United States last year nearly equaled the cost of the magnificent military establishment of Germany, which for the year 1886 was $84,968,140. That our readers may have some idea of the generosity of the United States in the line of pensions, we invite their study of the following table of amounts paid out of the National Treasury for pensions from 1861 to 1887:

1862 say?, 170 IH6S 1,018,5131 1854 4,:,85,41!' 1805 16,34, ,'.21 ]S ,6 15,605,5.,01867 20,9 >0,562; lo«>8 ...... 23.782,387 1869 28,476,622! 1670 23,340,' Oil 1871 31,4 3,695 j 1872 28,533,4 3 1873 2427 l 18/4 29,038,41 I 1175 29,456,2101

1879 828,257,396 11877 27,963,752 ;1878 27,137,019 1879 : 3;,121,482 1880.. 56,777,174 1881 50,059, VBO 1882 63,345,194 ‘1683 66,012,574 1884 55,42!',228 (1885 56,102,267 1386 63,404,864 1 1887.. 75,029,101 ! Total 8832,031,770

The estimated pension appropriation for the present year is $80,000,(100. In the face of this showing the National Pension Committee of the orand Army of the Republic has presented a bill to Congress calculated to lap up every surplus dollar in the treasury. It asks for an invalid pension of sl2 a month to all persons who served three months in the army or navy and were honorably dischaiged, no matter how tbeir present disability was occasioned. It also has wide-open provisions for the pensioning of the widows and children as er the dite of the pensioner’s death, without regard to the cause of the pensioner’s death. An annual surplus of $100,003,01)0 would vanish before such a ra\enous bill as this, which is being urged by pension agents who are striving their utmost to disgust the people over the whole mercenary business which masquerades in the sacred garb of patriotism. Senator Hawley says: “It is not the fault of the Bepublieans that the taxes are so high, and that all this surplus has accumulated. Revenue measures must start in the House, and the Democrats have had the House ten out of twelve years.” The Senator is disingenuous. He knows that tariff' reform every time has been beaten in the House by the Republicans and the handful of Randall Protectionists, who pv ctically are Republicans on the tariff question; and that, if it had not been beaten there, it would have been beaten in the Republican Senate —and with his assistance, top. A good conscience is the best divinity.