Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1893 — CONCERNING REVOKED PENSIONS: [ARTICLE]

CONCERNING REVOKED PENSIONS:

Great glee is manifested by the Republican prtsswhene er the report comes! that a pensioner has been.dropped from ! the rolls. They heralded far and wide I the report that Secretary Hoke Smith had been burned in effigy over in Ohio, because an aged veteran had been deprived j of his pension. Asa •: atterof fact,noth-' ing of the kind happened. Unfounded reports that persons havs j been dropped rrom the rollc are started 1 and go the round of the iepublican press, and frequently enlarged upon. The Frankfort Crescent sta es that it is reliably informed th3t certa n Republi-. oans of Clinton county are obtaining lists of Democratic veterans who draw pen. sions, and their names are being sent to

the pensi.'n department with a view of Scouring their disniis al from the rolls.— The purpose of this dastardly soheme is to raise a howl for politioal purposes.— Could partisan meanness be carried to gre iter extteaes? No Democrat would be guilty of such unfair methods. Democrats believe that every veteran who is justly entitled to a pension should have it—and believe, too, that every man who is entitled to a pension, is getting it, or will get it. In a recent ccmmnnioatiou to the National Tribune, Commissioner Lochren says: My old comrades may feel sure of receiving everything to which the law most liberally construed, entitles them. Partisan leaders may try jo arouse foeling for partisan ends; but the execution of the law upon the construction givon to it by two heads of the same department of ODposite politics, which construction is admitted by either to be corroot. has no political character, and I did not hesitate to oommit. the work to a board of revision whose ability fitted them for it, though most of them, wilh their chief, are Republican. They are able and fair men and select from day to day, from the cases examined, such cases as they deem unlawfully allowed. None of the pensions in these cases are suspended until after condemnation by this board. It is expeoted that in very many of suoh cases the pensioners will be able to produoo testimony showing them entitled to pensions under the law, in which case the suspension will be removed.