Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1912 — PENSION BUREAU’S REPORT. Seventy-Five Per Cent, of Civil War Soldiers Now Dead. [ARTICLE]

PENSION BUREAU’S REPORT. Seventy-Five Per Cent, of Civil War Soldiers Now Dead.

Washington, November 9. —There now on the government’s pension roll 538,000 soldiers and 932 dependents and widows and 362 army nurses, according to the annual report of the pension bureau. Thebe include 497,263 survivors of the civil war and 283 widows of the war of ISI2. To provide for all of them this year $151,558,142 has been appropriated, a decrease of $3,276,096 from last year. It is estimated that there were 2,213,365 individuals in the military aijd naval service of the United States during the civil war, and that upwards of seventy-five per cent, of them are now dead. The report predicts that the abolishment of the pension agencies, effective January 31, 1.913, and the payment of all pensions direct from the pension bureau, will result in a more efficient and economical administration, avoiding duplication of work apd saving expense. The total number of pensioners under the general pension law is 838,210, their pensions aggregating $144,973,569, and under special acts of congress, 22,084, aggregating $6,584,572 annually.