to render them unable to earn a support shall ... be placed upon the list of invalid pensioners of the United States and be entitled to receive a pension not exceeding $12 per month, and not less than $6 per month, proportionate to the degree of disability to earn a support.

I would have you note that the disability of the applicant need not at all be due in any way to his service as a soldier, and that but ninety days are requisite. I confess that I can see no justification for the giving of a pension on such a narrow ground as this. It practically throws open the doors to all, for what might be, if strictly construed and strictly administered, a saving clausethe inability to earn a support is practically of little avail. The degrees of inability are not considered, nor the actual need of the applicant, who is not called upon to say whether there is any necessity for his asking aid. I am glad to say that the injustice of granting pensions for mere service has been vehemently opposed by a considerable body of the G. A. R. Again as the law is administered it does not take into account the fact that one may be incapable of manual labor who is yet able to support himself quite comfortably by intellectual toil. I need hardly remind you of a flagrant case of this sort which only recently has attracted attention. Judge Long of the Michigan Supreme Court, receiving a salary of $7000 per annum for his services on the bench, applied for and received a pension for total disability

$72 per month. The present Commissioner of Pensions, Judge Lochren, suspended the pension, but was forced to restore it. Another case is that of a wealthy manufacturer right here in Massachusetts who receives also $5000 a year from the government for his services as a Congressman. Judge Long and General Draper are but conspicuous examples of a large class of well-to-do men who think it no sin to receive an unearned stipend from the national treasury. It is disgusting that such a state of affairs should exist, but alas it receives all too much encouragement from the present system.

I have already alluded to the discreditable influence of the pension attorneys. Let me quote from Lieutenant Foote, founder of the Society of Loyal Volunteers. He says:

As though it was feared that those who volunteered to serve their country would not volunteer to accept the bribe thus offered them, sixty thousand pension attorneys have been commissioned, about twenty

thousand of whom are in active practice, to hunt up the old soldiers, and coax, urge, and tempt them to make oath that they are "unable to earn a support by manual labor." For this work of corrupting the loyalty, honor, and honesty of the "Boys in Blue" the government offers a reward to the pension attorneys of ten dollars each. These pension attorneys are reënforced by senators and representatives in Congress, who in one year have made 154,817 requests on the Commissioner of Pensions for the "condition of claims."

Comment upon such a deplorable picture is superfluous.

The defects in the pension laws already pointed out ought perhaps to be sufficient to make clear the need of reform, but they are not all that exist. The laws place a premium on dishonest marriages by the provision that a woman who shall have been married to a soldier before June 27, 1890, shall, on his death, be entitled to a pension. Numberless cases have been cited where young and robust women have married old and decrepit soldiers merely that they may enjoy the pension which would fall to them when the husband dies; numerous cases have been cited where women have preferred, after the death of their husbands, to lead an irregular life rather than openly to enter the marriage relation again, in order that they might retain the pension which the government was giving them.

The extent of this can be imagined when it is noted that in a single county of one of our Middle States, having a population of 84,000, where special inquiry was made on this point, there were found four families of illegitimate children, of eight, three, and three children and one child respectively, whose fathers and mothers were living and whose mothers were drawing widows' pensions. In two of these cases, upon the pension being stopped, the parents promptly married.

There are still on the pension rolls twenty widows of the Revolution, six thousand six hundred and fifty-seven widows of the War of 1812, although there were but one hundred and sixty-five survivors of that war. I am sure, gentlemen, that you agree with me that something ought to be done to rid the system of this dishonest and demoralizing practice.

Not only are the pension laws strikingly lax, but the provisions for their administration are also exceedingly defective. They do not require that the evidence supporting the applicant's claim shall be given under such safeguards as in ordinary business

would be deemed essential. For instance, if the applicant can give no better testimony that of two of his comrades is considered. Now, gentlemen, I submit that this gives opportunity for collusion and fraud which, even among your honorable body, many may be found unable to resist. The looseness of the system seems an invitation to an evasion of the requirements. The soldier is made to feel that it is only a little technicality that stands in the way. Why let it defeat the evident desire of the government to deal generously with the veteran? There is so little investigation of the merits of claims possible under the plan that the government has been made the victim of numerous unfounded and exorbitant claims. Instances of this sort doubtless suggest themselves to many of you. Congressman Warner in the Forum for June, 1893, cites a number of cases. Let me repeat one of them. A veteran pensioned for being crippled was proved to have been crippled before the war, and it was discovered that he had been personated at the original muster by a physically sound man, whom he had hired for $25 to take his place for the occasion. His name was removed from the rolls after he had received $2000. Under the law of 1890 he became again a ward of the nation and now receives $12 a month for total disability (from the injury which occurred before he enlisted and to conceal which and to get into the army at all he committed perjury). There are yet other defects in the system of procedure in pension cases, but I need not weary you with their recital. My purpose in chief part, will have been accomplished if I succeed in impressing you with the vital importance of the subject. Once you realize that, I am sure your line of action will be that to which patriotism and a sense of high honor impel. I shall call your attention to but one more aspect of the pension question, which seems to me to call not for reformation only but for entire abolition. I have in mind the private pension bill.

The private pension bill (which I need hardly tell you is a special act of Congress giving to a certain person a stipulated pension) has come to be a common measure in Congress. In the fiftieth Congress no less than four thousand two hundred and ninety-five such bills were introduced, and in the fifty-first Congress the number was up to six thousand four hundred and ninety-nine. You see at once, gentlemen, how impossible it is

that there should be any adequate consideration of their merits. The records of Congress committees are enormously increased. These bills are introduced indiscriminately by Congressmen who are often ignorant of their merits. In 1892 a prominent Southern member introduced a bill to restore a soldier's widow's pension. Investigation showed that an exact duplicate of this bill had become a law in 1891 and that the Pension Bureau had been unable to find the beneficiary. The Congressman was forced to admit that he knew nothing of her, and had no recollection of the matter. He had simply reintroduced the bill as a matter of course, without any question as to its previous history. The result is that the pension granted to Sarah A. Phelps is yet without a claimant. As in this instance, so scores of other bills are reintroduced without any inquiry as to whether the conditions remain to justify doing so. Another consideration must be urged by way of condemnation of the special act, a consideration which I am sure will commend itself to the soldier who loves his flag. It is that the private bill provokes a feeling of resentment in the minds of the less favored who have not the acquaintance or influence necessary to secure the passage of a bill. Here, as in so many other cases of political action, a “pull" is sure to give its possessor an unusual advantage. It may be well asked why there should ever be such a thing as a private pension bill. We are told that it is to enable deserving claimants to secure relief denied them by the technicalities of the Pension Office. But with lax and extremely liberal laws administered in the freest sort of manner is it probable that a really deserving claim could meet with difficulty in the Pension Office?

I have pictured to you some of the evils attaching to our pension system, and I have done so, I must say, with a sparing hand. The picture might be darker, I regret to say, but as I have given it to you is it not dark enough to demand your most serious attention? Is not a system that costs annually $165,000,000 and promises to cost many millions more; that places nearly a million of persons in an attitude of dependence upon the national government; that degrades loyal and patriotic sentiment; that fosters corruption and fraud - is not such system, I say, in need of reform? And are not you the men to whom we should first look to take up the task of eradicating the evil?

Gentlemen of the G. A. R., you have a new duty, requiring a fine courage, a true perception of patriotism, a noble loyalty, as in 1861. It requires you to defend your honor from the defamation that is coming on it unawares, through the unholy greed that corrupts men who have made use of the gratitude of a generous people and your silence to gain their selfish ends. May you hold the memory of those who fell by your side as a sacred trust, guarding your own honor with a jealous pride, inspired with a sense of loyalty to the nation, and a high ideal of the true dignity of American citizenship. Emphasize the separation that exists between you and those who are actuated in their clamor for pensions by the lustful greed of selfish gains. Let your names be inscribed upon a roll of honor that shall mean to all who see it that you were loyal when loyalty required courage, that you were honorable when dishonor was made profitable. Then you shall leave a record that shall teach the coming generations lessons of the highest and most enduring value. Yours is a glorious past; the present affords you another glorious opportunity to deepen the gratitude of a thankful nation whose preservation was your work. May the beautiful anniversary which we have so recently celebrated never lose its ancient charm, but rather grow more beautiful and more tender every year as one by one the members of the Grand Army hear the silent call that bids them welcome to the ranks of those who have gone before.

XXIX

AN ARGUMENTATIVE SPEECH

FORENSIC F

A New Plea on an Old Subject

Mr. Toastmaster, Graduates of Phillips Exeter Academy, Friends:

As I look up and down the rows of faces which line the table to my right, and to my left, and note the half incredulous expression which my subject has aroused on some faces with which I am familiar, I am irresistibly reminded of an experience similar