Carl Schurz

“ All such plans will, of course, find the greed of the pension attorney and the cowardice of the politician in their way. But it may dawn at last upon the politician that his cowardice is stupid. For while an earnest effort to reform the abuses of the pension system may cost him, on the one hand, a few votes of interested persons, it will, on the other hand, win him the favor and support of a much greater number of thoughtful and patriotic men. ”

“ The New York Times has done the American people an excellent service by furnishing the thing thus demanded. It has, indeed, not undertaken the gigantic task of overhauling the whole pension roll, but it has laid before the public a demonstration sufficiently conclusive. It has sent its reporters to several inland towns in this State to inquire into the cases of individual pensioners living there, and thus it has been able to spread before the public an array of evidence, the representative character of which no fairminded man will deny. ”

“ The average American is certainly willing that every deserving soldier who suffered in the war shall have his full share of honor and of the Nation's bounty; but he is not willing that the people should be plundered by the fraudulent practices of greedy pretenders and speculators, and he will be grateful to the public man who aids in delivering the country of this pest. ”

“ Here we have lots of men drawing pensions for “disabilities incurred in the service and in the line of duty,” who have given no evidence of the existence of the disabilities alleged—men who were for twenty years after the war notably strong and able-bodied; men who draw increased pensions for increased disabilities, while they are no more disabled than before; men who draw the maximum pension for total disability preventing them from “earning a support at manual labor,” but who are earning a living by manual labor as well as they ever did before ”

“ The number of names on the pension roll, not counting the applicants, is much larger than was the number of men in active service at any period of the war. We are paying more for pensions than all other nations together. Our pension expenditure is heavier than the expenditure of the largest military power on earth for its military establishment. ”

“ It is the highest time to stop in this mad career. Much of the damage done cannot be repaired. But effectual efforts can at least be set on foot to eliminate the fraudulent cases from the pension roll. We suggested already a year ago that to this end the public display of a list of local pensioners, with a statement of the disabilities, in every post-office in the country would be a great help. The proposition of the Times that a commission composed of old soldiers be charged with conducting an examination of the whole pension roll seems to us commendable. ”

“ In other words, the pensions, before we are through with them, will have cost us at least as much as the whole war debt amounted to, and perhaps a good deal more, for the pension sharks are by no means through yet with their demands. We shall therefore have to consider not only how much a war may cost us, but that a heavier expense, although spread over a longer time, will begin when the war is over. ”

“ Thus it may be said without exaggeration that our way of showing our so-called gratitude for military services rendered in one great war, taken as a precedent, renders our financial capacity for carrying on another great war seriously questionable. ”

“ If by some unhappy foreign complication we should be forced to assume a warlike attitude, it would become a matter of grave consideration how much of that sort of luxury the country could afford to indulge in. ”

“ This act, putting comparatively large sums of money within the reach of pensioners, excited the greed of many veterans, and served to establish the procuring of pensions in great quantities as a regular industry and one of the most profitable in the country. ”