Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1890 — MORE PENSIONS. [ARTICLE]

MORE PENSIONS.

Out of Every So Collected ns National Revenue, $2 go to the Soldiers and Sailors whs Saved the Union and to Their Dependent Families. The Republican party in its last National platform proclaimed this doctrine: < “The legislation of Congress should conform to the pledges made by a loyal people and be so enlarged and extended as to provide against the possibility that any man who honorably wore the Federal uniform shall become the inmate of an almshouse or dependent upon private charity. In harmony with this recommendation, which the people indorsed, the Republican Congress and the Republican President have placed an additional annual sum of $35,000,000 to the credit of the pension fund for the benefit of 250,000 just claimants whose names have until now been absent from the rolls. The pensions of 50.000 men already there are increased from $2 a month to $6. The pension list is enlarged to include a total of 750,000 beneficiaries, and total of $150,000,000 per year is applied for their relief. For the coming year the Government will pay $2 out of every $5 collected for the maintenance of the infirm, maimed, and dependent heroes who offered their lives in its defense. History contains no instance of such a practical demonstration of gratitude on the part of a nation to its soldiers and sailors! This was accomplished as every stage, as, perhaps, was natural, in the face of a violent, bitter, relentless Democratic opposition. The party which, in the eloquent words of George William Curtis, the orator who now prositutes his eloquence to its service, “fell from power in a conspiracy against human .rights and now sneaks back into power in a conspiracy for plunder and spoil, that party would naturally starve the heroes who escaped its bullets. That it has failed to do-so is not the fault of its Congress or its President.