Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1888 — Private Pension Bills. [ARTICLE]

Private Pension Bills.

It is but a few weeks since the President, in returning a private pension bill to Congress without his approval, said that "if the veterans of the war knew all that was being done in the matter of private pensions they would be more disgusted than any other class of our citizens." If they would read the ease of Mary Ann Dougherty they would be still more disgusted. Pensions are intended for soldiers and their widows and children, not for fraudulent claimants. Every dishonest man or woman placed on the pension roll is a disgrace to those who are honestly there. A woman named Mary Ann Dougherty applied to Bureau for a pension on the ground that she was the widow of a soldier. By false swearing on her part she received the pension for a time, until it was discovered that her husband was still living and was draiving a pension in his own right. Then she was dropped. Next she applied to Congress, and, by the aid of log-rolling and the persistence of pension agents, got a bill through granting her a pension on the ground that she was employed in the United States Arsenal in making cartridges, and while so engaged was injured by an explosion. The police records of Washington show her to be a woman of bad character, who had been under arrest nine times for drunkenness and various misdemeanors. The President vetoed the bill because the woman was not entitled to consideration under the pension laws. “I have considered,” says the President, “the pension list of the Republic a roll of honor, bearing names inscribed by national gratitude, and not by improvident and indiscriminate almsgiving." If the Pension Bureau as it is at present constituted cannot adequately consider and take care of all the cases where a pension is justly due, let Congress enlarge its scope so that it can. The improvident bills which Congress has passed fully show how incompetent the pension committees are to deal with the eases brought before them. There is entirely too much log-rolling in the matter. Or, as the President suggests, if pensions are to be granted on equitable grounds and without regard to general laws, let some tribunal be established to examine the facts in every case and determine the merits of the application. The passage by Congress of private bills is a rank injustice to honest claimants, and should be stopped.-- Chicago Herald.