He
then put in a claim which was twice rejected by the pension
office examiners, but each time the decision was overruled, and
in the end he was put upon the pension roll. This case is only
one of many made possible by lax methods of investigating pension
claims. Senator Gallinger of New Hampshire eventually said of the
effect of pension policy, as shaped by his own party with his own
aid:
"If there was any soldier on the Union side during the Civil War
who was not a good soldier, who has not received a pension, I do
not know who he is. He can always find men of his own type,
equally poor soldiers who would swear that they knew he had been
in a hospital at a certain time, whether he was or not--the
records did not state it, but they knew it was so--and who would
also swear that they knew he had received a shock which affected
his hearing during a certain battle, or that something else had
happened to him; and so all those pension claims, many of which
are worthless, have been allowed by the Government, because they
were 'proved.'"
* June 27, 1890.
The increase in the expenditure for pensions, which rose from
$88,000,000 in 1889 to $159,000,000 in 1893, swept away much of
the surplus in the Treasury. Further inroads were made by the
enactment of the largest river and harbor appropriation bill in
the history of the country up to this time. Moreover, a new
tariff bill was contrived in such a way as to impose protective
duties without producing so much revenue that it would cause
popular complaint about unnecessary taxation.
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