226 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



no discrimination was made in favor of the poor and 

 against the rich. The poor soldier was the most earnest 

 in his opposition to such discrimination. And yet we 

 have heard here today repeated criticism of the law be- 

 cause it does not make such a distinction. 



Mr. Gaines : Let me ask the gentleman this question : 

 If Jay Gould were living today, would the gentleman be 

 willing to pension him? 



Mr. Lacey : If Jay Gould were living today and had 

 fought in the war, say had lost his arm in the war, I 

 would not care if he owned the whole Southern Confeder- 

 acy, I would still pension him. I would not draw any 

 distinction as is suggested here. I would not require 

 the old soldier to go down upon his knees at the pension 

 office and say, "I am a pauper and I ask the grace of the 

 government. ' ' I would have him, rather, go and demand 

 his pension as a right from the government, which adopt- 

 ed that policy in years gone by. This pension roll will 

 decrease fast enough. A good deal of sport has been 

 made in this debate about its not having reached the max- 

 imum. It has been said that it was to have reached the 

 maximum in 1894; well, it would have done so in 1894 

 if the law had been fairly administered under the last 

 administration. 



I am about to explain to the gentleman from Mis- 

 sissippi (Mr. Allen) why the roll did not reach the 

 full limit at that time. The secretary of the interior 

 in that Democratic administration was Mr. Hoke Smith, 

 of Georgia. He had control of the pension bureau and 

 he prevented the roll from then reaching the full limit. 

 He was determined that it should not, and he applied all 

 the power of the national government to keeping it down, 

 and the $8,000,000 that has been referred to as having 

 covered back into the treasury was simply arrears from 



