Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1912 — Senate Committee Rejected the Sherwood Pension Bill. [ARTICLE]

Senate Committee Rejected the Sherwood Pension Bill.

The United States Senate committee has rejected the Sherwood pension bill, which provided a dollar a day pension for all civil war soldiers who had served one year or more, and adopted the Smoot bill which provides for pensions ranging from sl3 to S3O per month. The failure of the senate committee to recommend the ' Sherwood bill proves a shameful -ingratitude. The service of the grand and valient sons of the north deserves a richer reward than they are now receiving. During the period they were risking their lives on southern battlefields, taking chances with” the diseases of camp life and making all manner of sacrifices inorder to contribute -to the union of the states and freedom from the bondage of slavery of the coloreu people, the stay at homes were getting started toward prosperity. The government has hitherto been very good to its patriots, but the past few years there has been a growing carelessness. It is possible that in a half century we are going to lose our spirit of fairness and forget the debt for our existence? Who are there today that would enlist for a period of from one to four years for all the hardships and dangers of war with the promise that were they not killed and did they not die and did they live to be'seventy years of age, they would receive S3C a month for the service? We dp not know where the money was to come from. It might be a bit hard to figure out. It is often hard for any of us to pay our 'debts. But our government should not repudiate this debt to its gallant preservers if every other national improvement is of congressmen have been raised while the debt to the soldiers has been left unpaid. The congress has voted itself a big traveling graft while denying a part of the debt to the men that made bur union possible. Commission after commission has been appointed at fat salaries for their members, massive and unnecessary federal buildings have been constructed in cities all over the country and the money that should have gone to the old soldiers has paid fßr them. While government civil employees have in plenty receiving salaries often far in excess of the services rendered, grand old men who spent the best years of their lives in the defense of the union have lived from hand to mouth because the government has failed to pay the debt it owes them. »The refusal oi congress to pass dollar a day pension legislation is the nation’s crowning disgrace. . In Rensselaer and in Jasper county there are men who served from one to four years in the union army and who are bowed down by the hardships of their service. If this senate committee could only see these men, realize their needs and their hopes, and not be moved with a spirit of justice and sympathy, then their hearts art surely turned to stone. Here is a man with a crippled leg; he has been carrying a bullet in i since the war; here is one with a stiff hand, a bullet caused it; here is one with a deaf ear, another with a blind eye and others with diseases contracted in service that have told on them with great severity during the past few years, and this blatant bunch of hard-hearted and. Indifferent law makers with big salaries ask them to eke out an existence on from sl3 to S2O a month, implying that if they can’t manage their finances so as to get along at that price there are almshouses and relatives for them to depend upon. Foods are higher, rents are higher, clothing is higher, the national method of living requires more, and the old soldier desires and deserves to live with his head up and with the independent knowledge that he is of right drawing from the government pay for what he put into it It is with shame we realize that the senate committee on pensions is dominated by men so ungrateful, dishonest, indifferent and disloyal as to recommend to the lawmakers of this nation of boasted fairness and freedom a repudiation of any part of its most pressing national debt. May the senate have the honor to do what the cowardly majority of its committee refused to do. ~~~ ■£ .... „ "Hello! this you Mary?” “Yes." “Are ybu going Wednesday evening?” "Going where?" “Why, haven’t you heard T “No.” “Why, to the band boys’ musical.” “Why, .1 didn’t know it.” “Well it is advertised in the papers.” "Why sure I’ll go. Let’s make up a theatre party, we can, fifteen or twenty in our bunch.” "All right, there are five other parties going of about twentyfive or thirty; let’s have the biggest party there?” “All right.” “Don’tforthe place, Ellis opera house, Wednesday, Feb. 21. Goodby.”