Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1890 — THE DISABILITY LAW. [ARTICLE]

THE DISABILITY LAW.

It'will not be long before this- pension measure, so resolutely resisted for a time, will be regarded as one of the most beneficent pieces of Congressional legislation in years. The public will. indeed, comp ts regret in Selfish way the rapid disappearance of the old soldiers, 5,476 of whom died last year, It will be found that the people made a good investment when they authorized Congress to pass that disbursing act known as the disability law. And the soldier, too, will admit, when the sense of disappointment is past, that the provision is a generous one, and quite adequate to his just needs. As for the Grand Army Itse.f. the reports submitted yesterday show it to be in belter condition than ever before, owingjto the large accessions to its ranks of ex-soldiers, who, for one or another reason, have held aloof from the organization these many years. The total enrolled membership is now 458,§33, by many the lowest it has ever been, though there is yet a considerable number of members who are not members. At best th ip great order, to which the country owes all that it now is. will ba.e utterly disappeared in twenty-five years. Present y the old. soldiers will pass away like the autumn leaves falling from stricken branches. Each year will mark an in-: crease in their death rate,, and the disbursements will annually diminish, and rapidly, after they Have reached their maximum. But suppose the old soldiers should continue in line as numerous as they now are for another quarter of a century, and we should go on paying the annual $150,000,000. the total amount expended at the end of that time would be but $2,750,000,030—and what is that compared -with what it would have cost us to maintain two governments on this continent, the one a slave oligarchy, the other a nation of freemen? Moreover, all that time the money will b& pouring into and out of the Treasury In [endless rotation to keep our finances healthful, and tending, as we believe, to decrease the unjpet accumula'ions of vast fortunes in the hands of the few. —Chicago lnter-Ocean (Bep.) Aargust 14, 1890. If you approve of the Republican policy of liberal pensions, vote for the Republican Legislative and Congressional. candidates.