Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1889 — SAT DOWN ON TANNER. [ARTICLE]

SAT DOWN ON TANNER.

PRESIDENT HARRISON GIVES A PENSION ORDER. No More Cases to Be Taken Out of Their Regular Order Except Under Unusual Circumstances —The New Rule Costing a Shark 8100,000. [Washington special.] The President has at last concluded it wise to sit down on Pension Commissioner Tanner. It long since became apparent that Tanner must be either bounced or repressed, and after a fortnight of deliberation the President has decided in favor of the more gentle policy of admonition and restraint. In pursuance of instructions from the White House, Secretary Noble sent a communication to the enterprising distributer of the surplus, calling his attention to the Interior Department regulation which forbids the taking of cases out of their regular order, except in cases wherein the causes therefor, stated in writing, would satisfy claimants whose claims have precedence. The communication adds: “It is hereby further ordered that this rule be extended so as to embrace cases only where the applicant is in very great destitution or at the point of death. This regulation will not only be strictly enforced, but attorneys, agents, or others persisting in applications contrary to its language and spirit will be disbarred from practice before the department. You will have this 'made public.” The purpose of this communication is to remove from the pension office the disgraceful scandal which had been growing up there. Pension Attorney Lemon, who always has a fat cheek ready for Republican campaign funds, had 10,000 cases for which preliminary orders of expedition had been issued by Tanner. The lifting of these 10,000 cases out of their regular order and into immediate consideration probably meant a cool SIOO,OOO in Lemon’s pocket, while thousands of claimants, who were not so fortunate as to have placed their business in Lemon’s hands, must await the slow movements of the office. Colonel Dudley also had a large number of cases in process of lifting out of regular order, and this action of the President is a sad blow to the pension practice of the “blocks of five" agent. Dudley and Lemon have up to this time had a pretty free swing with Tanner, and the issuance of this order is an official confession of the existence of the scandal. Tanner’s wide-open policy in the pension business is likely to lead him into other difficulties from which he will find it hard to extricate himself. Before leaving on his triumphant tour among the applauding veterans, Tanner confessed to one of his friends that he was, to use his language, “in a hole." Said he: “For years I have advocated, on the stump and at Grand Army camp-fires, the passage by Congress of a service-pension bill,’giving every soldier and sailor a pension. lam thoroughly committed to this policy, and I don't see how I can go back on it, though now that I have become Pension Commissioner and have looked the thing up, I find the service-pension till would bankrupt the treasury. I’d rather resign than face the old soldiers after going back on the service-pension bill, and if as Pension Commissioner I recommend that bill to Congress I’ll make myself ridiculous. How am I to get out of it?” Possibly Tanner will take some encouragement from the resolutions of the Ohio Republican Convention indorsing Kis wide-open tactics. The secret of that resolution is the desperation of the Buckeye Republicans. They are very much afraid that the State will go against them this year, as it has a way of going whenever a Senator is to be elected to succeed John Sherman's Senatorial colleague. As good an authority as William McKinley confessed during his recent visit to Washington that in all probability the Democrats would carry the State this year. The wide-open policy for pensions was proposed and adopted in the Columbus Convention in the hope that it would catch enough Democratic soldier votes to save the State.