| Show v N TfiE SIMS PENSION OFFICE Tour of the Big Building With Henry Clay Events tljo Pension CoiTiTTilsslonor I floods I DODO aDd What It Amount toTho Klondike or tho Old I oar or Uld Which Jla PnnM Opt of ItTh Wldowf ru Billion ll 100 And I soldier flow Tboy 00 Incrrlni8oiiie lmou Praple Who Uet Dig Suml l Autographs and a lllt to the HOKUM Gallery 10ulo task at the rrank G Car Sby 199 rlTlghlod rtrank PC j or I hbgtOA rb I 189SI spent two Ihlngtnn traveling through the recently r I with the lion Henry trice 900 commls the United States J nenln Mr pension I had asked of r per Idea of Uncle some me to die 205 pension business and together UBd from bureau to bureau and office asking questions of the to Or and gathering the nriill I In ctmrse SL ohleh I BUejou In this letter cmuldfloner hM the Office In it I condition than It has business tier lie not only ordered en for years rrblng be furnished me but t nolded In my investigations vas no mall one Th joumy Oils he EI olllce ot nton brick building of the world I clear Lit hat there has ever been a build I terade of brick which surpassed It te although the barbs of Dlocle ruins of which stand by the ill t olIlon11 In Rom wero a mile A trcm1feTtnCe This building cov rely 1 too acres but Iis I I throe too I to-o bill And there Is a lga Attic up i Ift has court In Ur ill glass roof It o a bam yard center bigger than any brick J have ever seen and the huge from floor to roof liars 0 hlch rise I b contain enough brick to build GOdlzod hous HE PENSION FILES AND MAIL iotli court and offices aro flllerlv llh tm i There ore hundreds of millions pigs of filing packed away here I ere are enough tiles i In the cases 01 t pension bureau court to carpet n only and the old documents among records If they could be pasted to ther In a ulnsle trip would be long ough to Cover 0 m ogon road reaching or around the Mld The pension re dali In big figure Take then II for Instance II the-n to thin dlvl n the conunleMi and I first went e commln recelles 20000 pieces moll a day or more than 7000000 ces my Year He sets moro than fl W < letter ln It Year If you could to the anfiwTs to Ui mall together I one single i trip II WDuhl make ft hon of jhite letter pUIr covered h tHoerlllng reaching from New Ik to Chlraco If he had to pay his lag at the rail of 2 cents per letter Imp till noull be over 1100000 a r and wbn Towfigureup the labor brain I uOuld have a number jr to times emberiled In that one Item Ake forty three clerk to brindle mail There Is one corps of men ull do nothing but open let fferof Ai er itampi the date of receipt upon lit hird I reads the letters and die them to the proper divisions for wer From four lto eight thousand oe 1 ere are ansered every day and t correipondei increases from year year 1E KLONDIKE OF Tim OLD SOL DIEM roary one of these letters has a ef end 10 It The pension office Is I Klondike of the old soldier and ate mn and women ulm are not iKldlm sk to pan gold out of the Jior Its rivers Last year the JUnt of money distributed was > t than 110 000 000 This was on In OM of more than II too 000 over the A paid out In 1895 and the commit ler tells me that there will be more d out this yonir than hllt Th gold Eel LI the Mrld are now producing m than ever boefdre and still tho I Output of them all 10 only bout WMO a Year If th gold mines of the orld more run to their full ex t to the next ten years they could Pt out as much gold as this office paid out for tensions on account the mar of the rebellion Up to last iS Amount WAR moee than 112I NOW Shofing a steady Increase 1 the clo clone of the war up until 1890 I In enormous increase since then a turn Is l beyond co conception and am lye stated It Is on the Increase It untoo much now uch year that mrr man Oman and child In the Itd States contributed 12 the agate ag-ate um would just about I pay the loa bill This in I equal to about forvary family In our country 01 OVer nOver 100009 goes abroad De ct J400 and 1000 Pensioners live In foreIgn countries andraw their money from Us The remainder tire scattered Over the United Staten from Florlda to MAJOR and from Massachusetts to California Cali-fornia and tha Woolens of money which flow here and are dammed up In the treasury are turned Into the great pension Irrigating 1 ditches every jcar and carry this golden flood to all parts of the country THE WORK OF THE PENSION OF FICI During our walk through the pensIon olllco i Commissioner Evans and myself spent some time In each of the divisions di-visions watching the hundred of clerks at work There were old and young mn among themand there were plenty 01 old and Young wo meet I asked a numb of questions an to the mcl eney of the mploye And was told that While the most of them Were very em dent clerks some were little good except ex-cept to tie up papers Onp man told me the poorest clerks he had were the old schoolmasters and another ahl tile girl In his bu react wr of lose I value than the men Due chief of a division old some of his beat omploe were colored and he pointed ns a piece or on met con who he gal do could take the heart out of a Pension ease quicker than any man ho had There are examiners ex-aminers and clerks scattered over the country so that all told Commissioner Evans has about 7000 men under him an army more than half as large as that which Xenophon led on his famous fam-ous march to the sea In one division I found about 75 doctors These men pass upon the medical testimony and they can pee a misstatement In the evi dence If It Is I not very carefully covered cov-ered All of them hay studied medicine medi-cine and not a row of them have been active practitioners Another division Is largely made up of lowyrwho lon pass l-on the legal nspct of certain cases and another might be said to he made up of detectives for It Is I their business to ferret out frauds l I I A great part of the work of our congressmen consists In pushing along pension camer There are now nn average I aver-age ui about live huuuiru oonslon al calls every dayand during tin lot four days more than two thousand oongresslonnl applications for Informo lion have been received Each of those necessitates the looking up of the papers pa-pers In a Certain came WHAT ONE PENSION CASH MEANS Since the clone of the war more than two million claims for pensions have been filed and of these more than a million and n half have been allowed There are hundreds of thousands of ad dltfonn1r Claims filed for Increase of pensions Alter the pensioner tiles his widow and I children are kept on the rolls and single pension Me man an enormous amount of Orknmmoneyi Every onofthe claims both those granted and those pending has to be kept by Itself And when It Is remembered that a single claim comprise In some cames enough papers to nil a peck measure you get mine film of the enormous work ot the office The ilaynns tire paroled into eXIrteto different divisions according to tho part of the country In which the claimant claim-ant lives Each claim has a number and the t papers conceming It am eo armngd that any one of them can be found In a moment Each claim eon t a Ins a biography I of the man who asks for the pension and there Is I no biographical bi-ographical dictionary so full ot Interesting Inter-esting things as that comprised In themes the-mes of the pension office If a man has ever done a mean thing In his life her had better not apply for a pension romany ro-many a crime I In on record here nnwAnn OF WIDOWS If Uncle Sam could speak to the young republics ot South America who are now and then on the verge of war I am sure be would advise them just asSam as-Sam Welters father I advised him when he said beware of the widows The widows of our old soldiers multiply liken the like-n of the seashore Nearly one fourth of the nine I h Jrtf odd thousand I thou-sand names on the pension roll am those of widows Thei am almost a quarter of a million widows receiving pensions and the widow are Increo Ing In number every year I spent some time In the division which has to do with soldiers of the war of 1812 There are only wven survivors of that war on the pension roll but there are 2SlO widows who are receiving pen stores because they married old soldiers who fought during the war There are today almost 118 many Mexican war widow as there tire MxleAn war veterans receiving pensions The Alex lean war was over fifty yrs ago and today there are tn thousand men and eight thousand widows receiving pen elons for the Bacolod which thmsplves or their deceased husbands gave Uncle I flam at that tlmo I You would think that the revolutionary widows would have long since passed away The last pension soldier of the revolution died April a 1103 Ills A Rome wn Daniel Frederick Dakeman and he wait one hundred and Re ven ree a Age before ho dasked 1 for a pension lie then resided at Freedom N Y Congrtfs took up hU case and gave him a pension of five hundred dollars tier annum lIad this mAn hen on the ordinary pnlon list and married a I year before his death a gill of eighteen and she In turn had lived as long as her aged husband Mz to the age of one hundred and nine Uncle Sam ould be paying that woman a Pension tip to the year 19CO There are now even widow of revolutionary soldiers on tit I e pension rolls The oldest of these 18 I Lovoy Aldridge and her age Is I nlnctjseten She lives In Los Angeles An-geles 1 Cal The other widows are Namy Cloud of Virginia orged eighty four Ithr S Damon of Vermont Bed eightythree Nancy Jones of Tennessee aged elghtj three Itebecca Mayo of Virginia aged elghtyfour Mary Snend of Virginia aged eighty one and Nancy Weatherman of Ten nsee ad Ightyven It has ben estimated that widow of the viotenens of the late civil War may le living In the year 000 A i D SOME DIG PENSIONS I The Presidents Idos get you know 15000 a year by special act of Congret Mrs Gen Grant and Mrs Garfield and Mrs Tyler I think arc still drawing pensions Mrs President Lincoln received 13000 A year from 180 10 18S2 when the amount was Increased to 15000 Mrs John A Lougion gt 110 D week and the widow of Admiral Far ragut reeelvs 12000 a year A number of Idows of noted general of the Into war have received or nm receiving pensions Among thee are Ih6 wIdow of r D Baker George II Custer the Indian fighter of 1I0brt Anderson the I hero of fort 8umter of Daniel Mc I Cook And Frank P Blair Among the biggest single pension amounts now granted alo those given to widow on aciount of the clause In the tension act of IklO which make the Idows Pension date bock to the death of her huband The other day a widow who hall been Innrlcd In 185 and whose hubond had died In 16G7 npplled for a Pension She claims the rIght to be pnJd IS a month for every month back to the death of hr husband hus-band a period of thirty year The law I am told will give her the pen sian Another widow from Ohio w1kose husband died In 187L married again I about fifteen years later she nov claims a pension on Recant of the death of her first husband for the fifteen years of widowhood and wants It In a lumpFAMOUS FAMOUS AUTOGRAPHS There are many rare old papers among these pension records Among the wIdow for Instance I find an autograph showing that Dlatnes great grandmother drew A pension for along a-long lime as a revolutionary widow This woman wn the wife of Col Iph rafm Maine lie wn II rich man a great friend of Washington and ho did good servloe during the revolution He died In ISO and the application for pension l was not made until 1848 Mrs Blalnes autograph was evidently made I with a trembling hand but the letters are almost as plain as those which her famous grandson used to make There are papers here from Benedict Arnold there art autogralih kttcrsfcr Whlngton and there arc applicatt Ins for land warrants from Abraham Lincoln Lin-coln U S Grant W T Sherman Wlnfleld Scott and Jefferson Davis I have traced the autographs of these men as thy were made In applln for Warrants when they were young Sherman Sher-man asked for two quarter sections of I land one or his riorrlda services tend the other for hie record In the Mexican War len Scott got his bounty tv is I braverY G the war of IRI2 and Jeff lIOn Davis was granted his for his services ser-vices an an officer In our war with Mexico President ITncohTs grant wato given for his serMces In the Hl1ek Ilayk Indian war and John A Logan received ICO acres for ills Mexican war I record ir PENSIONS wnnt LUMPED During my walk through the office with the commissioner I referred to the petition which in l being circulated In Indianapolis among the old veterans This petition requests Congress to pay the pensions In a lump on the basis that every soMler now ming will last for twenty ears These men want the twenty years pension given at once and If their request Is I granted they are willing to release Uncle Sam from all pension In the future I asked the commissioner com-missioner what would be the erred of such a law He said It would neceo Itate the paying ot least 3 000 000 000 and the probability Is that within three weeks n largo number of the pensioners pension-ers would have lost all they got from the government and omthln else would have to be done for them There Is of course no possibility of such movement succeeding It would not be seriously considered for an Instant by Congress IN THE ROGUE aALLEHY It Is I not generally known tint the pension office has a rogues gallery The commlsoner gave me my first In troductlon to It and we spent some time together looking over the Photographs photo-graphs of the Impostors who make < Ihelr living out Of the old I soldiers There are hundreds of such men now going over the country and there ue other hundinJs who tire serving their term In the penitentiaries Some tit Ihe men pose M special examiners nnd draw Money for Advance fees from the office Others Impersonate the medical ex nmlners In the pension bureau and charge for their services James Ferguson Fer-guson for Instance who Is now rv Ing a sentence In the penitentiary at foncord N II has been going over tho country representing that he was cinplojed by the pension bureau to appoint a special examiner In 1 each Court ty Ho would call upon some farmer nd offer him the place fn salarY of I If T5 per month When he had filled out the mans application he would tell him that the goverronrelorclo r Ihat every examiner should have n pair of handcuffs and revolver nnd that for his I purpose 110 must be pent with the ojnlb application This S10 woild 1 1 be put In 1 the letter coniafnnit th nppllOlltion nnd on the way lo the pVisloince with the man Ferguson would change the envelopes BO that he fot the 110 ei r jolrtlo Buckskin Joe a fat Jolly lokng II literate fellow represented that he was a detective sent out by th pension office and told the soldlcr that he would get their pensions for them If they would pay him r This man has been twice sentenced for such crimes though he Is now I believe at large The nev C W Lewis of Chattanooga a colored man operated almost entire ly with I widows He would Apply for pensions and fleece the widows out nt fh a certain amount for delivering tit 1 mall to them Another Impostor claimed to be the son ot Prcd Doug hl nU ii lass This man operatedjentirely f I with oolored people In addIIIn 10 UICS there are Impostors Who Oln 10 be doctors ant also a large number Nho tinder the guise of pen on Attorneys do their ht I to flee boUt the government ment And tire pnsloner out of their just due The laws Red ouch however how-ever that fhl is not Cloy too fleece the soldier who uses ordinary care an to getting his Inslon The real truth of tJoo matter Is I that there Is no necessity for an attorney In Petition case Tire requirements of the government are plainly expressed and all poprs will be promptly Petit upon Application FRANK G CAhPENTEn |
