728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



service is rapidly growing to the same proportions. Many of 

 those " retired " officers have been placed on the list by the arbi- 

 trary favoritism of Congress, and some of them never held the 

 rank in the army which they hold on the retired list. In f act, one 

 of the chief abuses of political power is the reckless and irrespon- 

 sible usurpation by which members of Congress confederate and 

 combine to place their friends on the retired list, and their con- 

 stituents on the pension-roll. 



One of the amiabilities of the practice is its freedom from par- 

 tisan bigotry. It is notorious that on a recent occasion the widow 

 of an eminent Republican politician was rewarded with a pension 

 of two thousand dollars a year, on condition that the widow of 

 an eminent Democratic politician should be included in the bill 

 and rewarded with a pension of the same amount. This having 

 been done, the Republicans voted for the Democratic pension and 

 the Democrats for the Republican pension. In this way the be- 

 nevolence was lifted up out of the impure air of partisan politics 

 into the ethereal atmosphere of good feeling and high life. 



In one of Irwin Russell's negro hymns, the jingle sounds like 



this: 



" Close up — saints in de center ; 

 Fall in — sinnahs on de flanks ; 

 An' all '11 get a pension an' a honorable mention 

 What stand up stiddy in de ranks." 



"We extend the principle far beyond those boundaries and give 

 pensions to claimants, whether they stood up steady in the ranks 

 or not. If the pension list could be analyzed it would be found 

 that, after taking out the wounded men, fifty per cent of the others 

 did not stand up steady in the ranks nor do any valuable service. 

 It would be found that their diseases are pension pretexts only, 

 and, where they really exist, that they were not contracted in the 

 army. 



In addition to pensions for all, we have supplemented claims 

 for " equalization of bounties," and schemes of that kind. A Con- 

 gressman from Iowa introduced a bill to give the soldiers the dif- 

 ference between the value of the greenbacks in which they were 

 paid and gold at the time of payment. The statesman who intro- 

 duced this bill is not at all troubled about where the money is to 

 come from to effect its purpose. He is a descendant of Marryat's 

 old sea-captain, who bequeathed princely sums to his friends, to- 

 gether with gold snuff-boxes and diamond-hilted swords which 

 had been presented to him by various emperors and kings. As 

 he did not own a dollar in the world, and the swords and snuff- 

 boxes had no existence, . the good-natured impostor showed his 

 liberality without subjecting his will to the dangers of a contest. 

 The sum of money necessary to pay that difference would be the 



