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Show tK ' ' ' n , I note without rogrot.thftt the legislature failed -to appropriate the sovenm'u' a half thousand dollars dol-lars with which to pay tlnr expenses of rr coterie of my old soldier f riendBfapm "tJifilvl'o thorGiiiri6r: Army encampment at Qetysburg this summer. Well, a lot of the boys nvho will stay at home didn't want to go, any waTo I an not get it out of mp mind that there is no more reason for giving stato"mbnoy for that cause than for the sending of tne plumbers to their -national meet; or the carpenters to theirs; or the delegates to the mining congress to theirs. There Isn't an interest of live value to tho people of Utah that hasn't a hotter claim on the people for transportaion and ctfnlmissary money than hitvo tho members of tho Grand Army. They all get pensions. A lot of them get pensions to which thoy are by no mariner of means entitled. They have been coddled so long that they are spoiled. They arrogate to themselves an undue importance. They have been flattered till they take themselves seriously. They meet every effort at rational argument ar-gument With the offended front of a Jove who scented Ingratitude. They tell you frankly that they saved the country, even if they have been carried to tho skies on feathery bods of ease. They demand laws that mark them as tho special favorites favor-ites for appointive offices; and they thereafter resent re-sent the Implication that they ought to do something some-thing for tho pay they draw. Thoy have made tho 'pension roll anything but a roll of honor, and they have blasted with block anathema tho mon who have tried to make of It a record of worthy heroism. Some people say a1 purse of seven and a half thousand dollars or some other sum will be raised with the expectation that the coming legislature will recoup tho guarantors with an appropriation. It wouldn't be wise for any one to go bail for any such law. There be men In this town with money onough to send to Gettysburg one or all of the prosont membership of the G A. R., of Utah. And they have a right to send them if so bo they want to. But it will be a perilous thing to advance the money on tho expectation that the legislature of nineteon-fifteen will take the money from the treasury of tho stato and refund it. I am not hostile to the old soldier. I honor him just In the degree that ho was a good soldio'r. And I know a lot of those who woar the bronze buttons who are very oxcollont mon, and most do- , slrablo citizens. But that doesn't mako anything that looks like tho beginning of an argument why tho state should pay seven and a half "thousand dollars or any other sum to send five, ton or a hundred of them to Gettysburg. And the time has about como when that sort of foolishness is and of right ought to bo impossible in any stato of the Union. |