Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1889 — Indiana Is a Favored State. [ARTICLE]

Indiana Is a Favored State.

Why is it that Indiana is getting 50 per cent, more pensions than Illinois? There is only one explanation, and that is pretty well understood nround the Pension Office, Indiana is a close State; it has been the battle-ground of many a national contest; a very small percentage of votes one way or the other means the gaining or the losing of the State. Indiana soldiers get more prompt attention to their applications than soldiers in Illinois because their votes are needed more. This partiality to Indiana began when a large increase of clerks in the Pension Office was authorized in order to catch up with the accumulation of business, the understanding being that this arrearage would be disposed of In two or three years, and then the force would be reduced. Six or seven years have passed, but the reduction has never occurred. When this increase was made there was no civil-service law to obstruct matters, and Colonel Dudley managed, in spite of efforts to apportion the clerks, to get a very large number of Indiana men into the office. They expedited the cases of their friends at home. Then Gen. Black, of course, had to treat the Indiana veterans as well as they had got used to being treated, so that they would not complain or make invidious comparisons, and Corporal Tanner is bound to show the Indiana veterans that the Republican party is the only one that attends to their applications with promptness. And so Indiana, with much fewer old soldiers than Illinois, gets about 50 per cent, more pensions day by day.—Washington dispatch.