724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It teaches that sloth and vice may eat the bread which virtue and 

 honesty may starve for after they have earned it ; it teaches the 

 idle and the dissolute to look up for that support which they are 

 too proud to stoop and earn ; it directs the minds of men to an 

 entire reliance on the ruling powers of the state." 



This condemnation will apply in general terms to every pen- 

 sion system. It is impossible to limit pensions to rewards for 

 sacrifice and service. Favoritism and fraud will crowd the pen- 

 sion ranks with pretenders. Every crippled soldier who has really 

 been disabled by battle-wounds must share his earned reward with 

 men who never did a dollar's worth of service. He must drag 

 along with him to the pension-office a dozen "comrades" who 

 never saw a battle and who never received the slightest injury to 

 body, health, or limb. 



" Veteran diseases " are those miraculous ailments which rage 

 unsuspected in the bodies of old soldiers until seductive pension 

 laws bring them to the notice of the sufferers. The Arrears of 

 Pensions Bill is responsible for over a hundred thousand veteran 

 diseases. This law was in existence about two years, and expired 

 by limitation July 1, 1880. In 1878, the year before the law went 

 into operation, the pension applications numbered 18,812. In 1879, 

 under the stimulus of the act, they rose to 36,835. In 1880 they 

 reached the shameful dimensions of 110,673. In 1881, the law hav- 

 ing expired, the number of applications fell to 18,455. The Ar- 

 rears of Pensions law invited the Grand Army to loot the treas- 

 ury, and 110,673 veterans accepted the invitation. The number of 

 applications filed the year .before the law and the year after it, 

 prove that the 110,673 extra diseases were made not by the war, 

 but by the Arrears of Pensions Bill. The bribe offered by Con- 

 gress put a hundred and ten thousand additional names on the 

 sick report for 1879 and 1880. 



The crippled and wounded soldiers, whose battle-scars were 

 vouchers to their honesty and sacrifice, did not receive any bene- 

 fit from the Arrears of Pensions law. They were already on the 

 pension-rolls. All the booty was divided among the men who 

 suddenly discovered that they were suffering from diseases of 

 which they had been ignorant for fifteen years. The moral enor- 

 mity of this proceeding is revealed in the fact that every one of 

 those claims was attested by the solemn oath of the claimant. 



The law of compensation pervades all things, and it applies 

 here. If pension laws are potent in the making of diseases, pen- 

 sions themselves have the opposite effect — they cure them. There 

 is nothing that promotes longevity like a pension. It is now sev- 

 enty-seven years since the War of 1812 began and seventy-four 

 years since it ended. Yet there are nearly a thousand men on 

 the pension-rolls who claim that they were soldiers in that war. 





