Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1889 — Tanner's Blunder. [ARTICLE]

Tanner's Blunder.

Commissioner Tanner’s remarks at Milwaukee concerning pensions to widows W6re grossly scandalous. He said, advocating the continuance .of the widow’s pension in the event of her remarriage, “that to fail to pass some such rule is to place a premium upon immorality. There is not a week that there are not a great many cases come to my knowledge where women have bartered away their virtue to retain their pensions. In my opinion you will do a just act to relieve the Commissioner and his subordinates from being forced into investigations for having granted pensions in cases where, according to law, they would not be granted, but were obtained by fraud. ” The whole attitude of the Commissioner is reprehensible. He intimates that pensions are fraudulently granted to widows who have remarried, and he doesn’t wish to be investigated for such lawlessness because of his sympathy with the woman. By parity he admits sympathy with a soldier who perjures himself to gain an undeserved place on the pension rolls. He would not have the Government defend itself from fraud in either case, and to prevent such immorality as there is in it he would have all the "bars let down. Tanner’s position is not fully declared, but practically it is summed up in the phrase, “Pension everybody and then morality will be promoted, for fraud need not be practiced. 1 ’ Tanner is not the man for Commissioner of Pensions if it is the design of the administration that the pension law shall be honestly enforced. —Chicago Times.