Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1888 — GRAND ARMY OF BEGGARS [ARTICLE]

GRAND ARMY OF BEGGARS

jJ?-' ; _ ' 4 . Such the Designation Applied to the Old Soldiers Who Ask for Pensions 1 A" Artffcle Woriby the Attention of Sol- 1 diem—A Democratic Organ Denounces Them a* Ileggnrs, Dead-Beats and Cof-fee-Co jlers. The following article apveared in the Chicago Times, a Democratic paper, as an editorial, March 2, 1887: DEFEAT OF THE ARMY OF BEGGARS! Thank God! the claim-agents,thedema-gogues, the dead-beats, and pordioseros, and deserters, and coffee-coolers, and bounty-jumpers, composing our great standing army of volunteer mendicants, have been defeated! * But the maintenance of the President’s righteous veto of the pauper pensions iniquity is not the end of the war upon the national treasury, which has been prosecuted by that army of insatiable cormorants ever since the war upon the national autonomy closed. The Presihaltand M Jl^fi w SllilfiX._liaa. been sustained, hut the army of cormorants. and claim-agents, and bountyjumpers, and professional mendicants only have been checked, not conqured. In fact, it is their'first repulse since the crusade of the noble army of pensionbeggars began. Their leaders, the claimagents and the party demagogues, will endeavor to rally their blood-sucking host and renew the war of mendicancy against industry. It is necessary, therefore, to follow up the advantage that has been gained; and give the hostile horde of thieves and beggars no rest until they shall have abandoned their villainous undertaking to depend on a government for support and gone to work to support both themselves and government. The Times repeats, therefore, now that the veto of the pauper pension steal has been sustained, everything that it uttered when there seemed to be great danger that congessional representatives of the claim-agents and bounty-jumpers would o\ erride it. ■ Not merely that most scandalous measures that has ever been sent to a President for his signature is the object that invites continued and uncompromising condemnation, but the principle which it was sought in that iniquitous measure to apply the theory and doctrine on which it was projected, and the whole vicious fabric of sophistry, cant, hypocrisy and humbug that patriotic rascality raised for its support. „ i

It is a postulate of claim-agents that the* grand army of pension-beggars“saved the country,” efc. That postulate is absolutely false. No- country, no nation, political constitution system, or establishment, has ever been saved by, or been able to depend for its salvation upon citizens that are not in the habit of depending on themselves or that would not indignantly spurn the idea of being or becoming either dependents or beneficiaries of the government. Nay, the truth is broader than this. Nor In all the history of the world can a political society be found that, becoming permeated with the idea that a government is an establishment for the support of citizens, instead of an agency for the execution of justice among them, did not speedily perish. No, this Republic has not been saved by any army of pensionbeggars, nor has any pension-beggar any advocate or apologist of pensionbeggary, the least basis of a claim to be enrolled among its saviors. On the con-, trary, pension-beggars, pension-beg-gary, and the notions of government that they imply, are more dangerous enemies of the nation than undisguised rebels. - '

A Southern writer who stood among the unpensioned rebels has objected, in a tone of great bitterness, to this crusade of the pension-beggars on the ground of alleged injustice to the citizens that fought on the wrong side. “There is -nothing left of the wary--h» -says, “exceptfng the annual tax [that is] wrested from the impoverished: South to pay pensions to the soldiers of the rich and prosperous North. * * * Not a Southern cripple receives a dollar of these taxes. Not a Southern home for a soldier gets a penny of them. Yet the South isfull of poverty,” etc. “If theSouth is a vassal, let us know it, and cease this’mockery of equality.” • This mode of writing is very foolish, and serves only to reveal the bitterness that still lingers in the liver of the confederate brigadier on account of the “lost cause.” Politically, there is no South,nor North, nor East, nor West. If there is a South it is more than an undefined geographical section of the country, it is a surviving number of citizens that were soldiers of the rebellion, but that, fortunately for themselves and their geographical section, have not been encouraged to become mendicant dependants on the bounty ot an unwise paternal government. “The ex-rebel soldiers,” said Mr. Bragg, “are toiling day by day, and exhibiting industry, energy and thrift that never was expected of them.” Why is this? It is because the ox-rebel soldier has not been enticed, tempted and encouraged by pension bills designed by demagogues to buy his vote, to become a professional mendicant. On the, other hand, the ex-soldier of the North, instead of thriving by dependence upon his own energy and industry, is in the almshouse, according to Mr. Warner, or, according to other claimagent statesmen, will soon be there un. less papa government grants him a pauper pension. Why is this? It is because papa government has indoctrinated him with the pestilent notion that it is becoming to a saviour of his country to fulfill the character of a dependent upon, its bounty, of a mendicant, of a loafer, of a pauper without character or self-respect, who has gained the blessed right to “lay down and open his mouth for a teat to suck.” a Which of these citizens—the ex-rebel soldier who is supporting himself and contributing to the support of the government by depending on his own industry and energy, or the ex-savior of his country who is lying down at the door of a poor hduse, (unless the bidders for his vote lie), opening his mouth and yelling for a teat to suck—is the worthier member and the more capable supporter and defender of the commonwealth? The Times says without hesitation: The ex-rebel, the man who is supporting the government as well as himself by his industry, energy and thrift is incomparably a better citizen and a stronger pillar of the State than the ersavior of his country who is begging the government to put a premium on pauperism and improvidence by giving him support from the earnings of the more industrious and worthy, Unfortunately, however, all the exrebels are not of this manly class, as,

fortunately, all the ex-saviors are not of this class of pension-beggars—though if the utterances of their so-called Grand Army societies are indicative of the fact, the majority of them plainly are of the mendicant order. The Mexican war pension bill was a sop thrown by Northern demagogism to the mendicant sentiment among ex-volunteer heroes in the Southern part of the country. It was a measure of the same vicious character as the pauper pension bill, and ought to rbaue-feeeived at the executive mansion the same treatment Yet it is not recalled that a single Southern statesman, press or writer emitted a word of objection to that vicious measure. y The truth is, as the Tjmes has ob>*> served before in this discussion, there up in the Dature of the volunteer hero (something that inclines him to the profession of mendicancy; something that tends to divest him of the manly character and self-respect of the independent citizen, and to degrade him to the Rtatus of a servile dependant or an incapable Sr. That this is the degrading icy, also,’ of the so-called Grand Army mutual self-glorification societies ftnijilft Times is, therefore, in agreement with its correspondent who says: “It will be a happy day lor the Republic when the last beggar of the Grand Army humbug is securely planted.