150 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[March, 
PENSIONFRAUDS. 
Cruel Impositions upon BJnstis- 
peeling' Soldiers. Down with 
Dishonest I*ension Agents ! 
Some time since the American Agriculturist called 
for information regarding Pension and Claim 
Agents, to the end that we might warn our subscrib¬ 
ers. In following this matter up, ike American Agri¬ 
culturist, at considerable expense, sent representa¬ 
tives to Washington and the West, whose investi¬ 
gations developed many very suspicious cases. 
The catalogue of offences and offenders is long, 
and will be greatly enlarged if our subscrib¬ 
ers and readers will forward to the American 
Agriculturist such information as they may have 
upon this subject, and which will serve to expose 
the base designs of those who prey upon the 
credulity of deserving soldiers or take advantage of 
the avarice of those who are ready to yield to temp¬ 
tation. Our representative in Washington had the 
hearty co-operation of many Government officials 
and Members of Congress, including Senators Van 
Wyck, Lamar, Miller, and Williams. Among the 
Senators, Mr. Van Wyck was untiring in his efforts 
to help along the good cause and to aid us in ferret¬ 
ing out the iniquities of this infamous traffic. Mr. 
Van Wyck, following our detenuinatiou to investi 
gate these pension wrongs, introduced in the Senate 
a resolution instructing the Pension Committee, cf 
which he is a member, to inquire whether any drum 
agents in Washington are guilty of extortion from 
claimants for pensions. This resolution was adopted 
and the investigation will proceed. The question 
that lies at the bottom of this whole matter is one 
that concerns the whole people. Pensions to the 
deserving will be freely paid, but the tide of cor¬ 
ruption must be stayed. There is 
A Sniiill Array ol'Claim Agents, 
in Washington, good, bad and indifferent, some 
thirteen hundred in all. Together they form a 
body which exerts a powerful influence upon 
legislation, not only directly by personal appeals, 
but indirectly through the thousands of pen¬ 
sioners and their friends whose “reflex action” is 
felt by the representatives of the people. A brief 
survey of the pension business will serve to bring 
the situation into clear relief. 
At the beginning of the War of the Rebellion the 
payments on account of pensions were about 
$11,000,000 annually. The war, of course, added 
largely to the list of pension claimants, and Legis¬ 
lation provided liberally for those who had been 
disabled, and for the families of those who had 
fallen in battle. In 1871, the pension list had 
reached $30,169,340, an excess of nearly $4,000,000 
over the previous - year. President Grant, in his 
Message, in December, 1872, said: “We cannot look 
for any substantial decrease * * * so long as 
Congress continues to change the rates of pen¬ 
sions.” The same year Congress added three 
quarters of a million dollars per annum to the 
roll, without increasing the number of pen¬ 
sioners. 
233,229 Pensioners in 1872. 
At that time (1872) the total number on the 
pension list was 232,229. In the fiscal year 
ending June 30, 1881, the pension roll was $50,- 
059,000; for the year succeeding it was $66,- 
282,000, and the appropriations for the year ending 
next June are $116,000,000. The more remote the 
era of the war, the larger the claims for remunera¬ 
tion for sendees then rendered, or wounds then re¬ 
ceived. A recent statement from the Pension 
Bureau shows that the list of pensioners now con¬ 
tains 285,697 names, and that more than as many 
original applications, and applications for an in¬ 
crease, are on file. 
$560,011,006 Given for Pensions. 
The sum paid for pensions in the seventy years 
from 1791 to 1861, is stated as $81,480,000; while 
the total amount from 1861 to 1882 was 560,641,- 
OOO. Who shall say that Republics are ungrateful ? 
It is time that a halt should be called, and that the 
profane sport of the Philistines of the Pension 
Agent “Ring” should cease to vex the crippled 
soldiers. The system as now conducted is al¬ 
most altogether wrong. In some cases it is a 
system of petty larceny perpetrated upon mutilat¬ 
ed veterans, or their helpless widows and children, 
who are cheated and robbed to the everlasting 
Disgrace of tlie Government and 
tlie People. 
The rapacity of some claim agents has no limit of 
decency or honor. Thousands of poor people who 
have already been swindled out of their hard earn¬ 
ings, in pursuit of claims that have been disal¬ 
lowed and rejected, are hunted up and induced to 
make another trial, under the specious plea that 
the Pension office is more tolerant under one Com¬ 
missioner, than under another. The victims of 
this conspiracy are told that the pension laws will 
be so liberally construed, that a pension will be 
granted for any wound or disability, even if caused 
by accident. In this way, the sharpers and blood¬ 
suckers play their “skin game ’’upon confiding 
men and women, who are tempted into paying an 
advance fee of $2, which goes into the coffers of 
the claim agent, who takes care to file the case 
away into the limbo of oblivion—out of sight 
and out of mind. An Act of Congress has set aside 
claims for back pay prior to 1866; yet there are 
claim agents who advertise that soldiers are enti¬ 
tled to those arrears, and thousands are gulled into 
the belief that the money can be procured, by en¬ 
trusting a fee of $2 to the agent. An Act passed 
June 20, 1878, limiting the fee of agents to $10, has 
opened the way to fraud, by making it doubtful 
whether the penal provisions of section 5485 are 
applicable to the offense of asking for or receiving 
an illegal fee. This statute was designed to pro¬ 
tect claimants, but it has been made the cover of 
fraud on the part of “ agents ” disbarred by the De¬ 
partment, and other irresponsible persons, who 
could be of no possible service to claimants. Com¬ 
missioner Dudley, in his report for 1880, denounces 
the conduct of these men and recommends the pas¬ 
sage of a law to punish such agents criminally. In 
his report for 1881, the Commissioner says that the 
Act of June, 1878, has “ stimulated many irrespon¬ 
sible persons to invite a general application of sol¬ 
diers for pensions, regardless of disabilities in¬ 
curred, by which, after filing the claim, they may 
obtain in advance the legal fee of $10, and thence¬ 
forth abandon the claim.” 
Infamous Business. 
It is a most infamous business throughout/ The 
rapacity of these agents is paralleled only by the vul¬ 
tures that fattened on the corpses of the dead, in 
the wartime. Such claim agents are the legitimate 
successors of these hideous birds of prey, and feed 
upon the wretched remnants of the patriotic host 
whose lives the more kindly bullets spared. The 
stake these men play for is a high one. With nearly 
300,000 applicants upon file, and as many more in 
sight, or to be hunted up, the advance fees run up 
to more than a million dollars, and with nearly 300,- 
000 claims already allowed, for each of which the fee 
is $10, another $3,000,000 will have gone into their 
pockets. To these sums may be added the blood 
money in petty fees, in postage, and in other ex¬ 
penses; the heart-breaking delays; the intermina¬ 
ble waiting ; the pitiful sufferings of those who 
have submitted to these extortions, and all the 
sorrow and agony that attend upon this bitter hop¬ 
ing against hope. 
£116,000,000 voted for Pensions in 
1882, against 60,000,000 in 1881. 
If these things were possible when the pension 
roll was not above $60,000,000, what will be the 
possibilities of wrong, when avaricious agents 
come to parcel out the $116,000,000 that Congress 
has voted for the coming year ? No wonder the 
camp of the myrmidons is alive with bustle and 
activity, and that the foul birds gather with obscene 
cries to the rich spoil that lies before them. 
Immediately after the war, as was natural, the 
applicants for pensions were numerous. In five or 
six years most of those who were entitled to pen¬ 
sions had procured them, and year after year the 
issue of pension papers was on a diminishing scale. 
Then began a revival of interest until now the ap¬ 
plications pour in at the rate of thousands per 
month. This has been going on for years, and 
yearly the tide grows higher and stronger. The 
motive power behind it is the demagogical action 
of Congress in the passage of laws which stimulated 
into unhealthy activity that passion to “ live off the 
Government ” which is so prevalent and predom¬ 
inant. All this was taken advantage of by dishonest 
and corrupt agents, who found an abundance of 
material to work up. The repeal of the law limit¬ 
ing the period during which claims could be filed, 
Opened the Sluiceways of De¬ 
moralization^ 
and prepared the way for claims that were utterly un¬ 
warranted, and in many cases absolutely wicked. 
Sickness in 1880 or 1882 was charged to the account 
of exposure or wounds in the war, and made to do 
duty in the application for back pensions to the 
amount of thousands of dollars. An agent recently 
put in a claim for a pension for a needy widow in 
Ohio, on the ground that a daughter, who would 
have been her support, took cold and died while 
attending soldiers in hospital during the war 
A case that came under our own observation 
illustrates the character of the men engaged in 
this business. A gallant soldier of the war lived 
sixteen years after his discharge without thought 
of a pension. lie then suffered from a sunstroke 
from which he died a year later. His ease did not 
escape the notice of the pension hounds, who were 
soon after the scent in full cry, with the false 
plea that a justifiable claim could be made on the 
ground that his sunstroke supervened upon ex¬ 
posures during the war 1 This was as clear a case 
of a fraudulent claim as could be manufactured, 
and it is but one of many thousands. It is time that 
this business should be stopped, and that fraudulent 
agents and fraudulent applicants should be so fully 
exposed and so severely excoriated, that none will 
dare to venture to carry out schemes which are 
neither more nor less than systematized robbery of 
the Treasury. 
Gov. Butler, of Massachusetts, calls attention to 
The Fraudulent Pension-Claims 
in the case of applicants for State aid in Massachu¬ 
setts. The relief furnished by that State is designed 
only for soldiers disabled in the line of duty. If 
those who are not entitled to the bounty share in it, 
the taxpayers of the State will begrudge the payment 
of money that is squandered on unworthy persons, 
and worthy soldiers will suffer. The trouble in Mas¬ 
sachusetts is that the State officers have accepted a 
United States pension certificate as conclusive evi¬ 
dence of the claim of the applicant. They have for¬ 
gotten that unscrupulous agents have procured pen¬ 
sion papers from thousands of persons who are not 
entitled to them, and that each case of State aid 
should stand upon its own merits. Mere ex¬ 
clusion from active work before the Commis¬ 
sioner of Pensions does not suffice, and it is 
trifling to call that an “irregularity” which is in¬ 
deed a “ crime,” not only against the people who 
bear the burdens of the Government, but against 
the honest soldiers for whom the Government has 
made generous provision. 
We ask tlie subscribers of this paper, 
whom we constantly aim to protect from 
fraud and imposition, to immediately 
send us details of every act of Pension 
Rascality which has come to their at¬ 
tention. Send the facts in a plainly 
written, brief letter, with your signa¬ 
ture, for publication. We already have 
a great mass of matter. It is a burning 
disgrace that this great Government 
should not take some means to protect 
its ex-soldiers through the country from 
the impositions and rascalities of dishon¬ 
est pension agents, who resort to all 
manner of devices for swindling the un¬ 
suspecting. In addition to sending the 
facts to the American Agriculturist, like¬ 
wise forward them to your representa¬ 
tives at Washington, with the request 
that they will look into the matter and 
assist in securing necessary legislation to 
protect both Government and ex-soldiers 
from swindling pension agents. 
