Show pension claims of R ready ady made widows halo LAM thousand claims for pensions S SIXTEEN growing out of the spanish war aro arc on file in the pension office in washington all the pensions incidental to this war are being disposed of more promptly than those growing out of the civil war because tho the machinery was in full operation at the time the claims accrued the events are recent enough that they do away with the difficulty of finding witnesses the records of the hospital surgeons and of the field hospitals have been carefully kept from the start sta rl indeed all conditions are favorable to a prompt examination and adjudication of these claims but when it romes to the civil war it is different diff erent widows claims have always been D source of interest in the pension office in fact the widow business has baa developed into a highly organized industry in some of the border states where many negroes who were in the union army are burled buried recently from one such community claims for widows pensions poured into washington within a few days all of them being from widows of colored soldiers in that neighborhood suspicion was waa aroused in the minds ol of the examiners and it war nr found that a sharp lawyer had worked up the claims for a commission dependent mothers furnish some trouble to the pension department with their claims though many have hava remarried since the war in some cases lawyers have coached them into destroying all records of their marriage and then to claim the common law mor riago which makes moro trow blo ble for the pension office |