Order No. 164, issued October 15, 1890, directed the Commissioner of Pensions that disabilities rendering claimants unable to earn a support in such a degree as would be rated under former laws at or above $6 and less than $12 should be rated the same as like disabilities of service origi, and that all cases showing a pensionable disability which, if of service origin, would be rated at or above $12, shall be rated at $12 per month. And to show conclusively that the inability of the applicant to perform manual labor was not taken into consideration at all in the rat ng of cases under this law, let us read the circular of the then Republican Medical Referee, dated December 10, 1890, to the Medical Division of the Pension Office, and ap proved by the Commissioner of Pensions :

"The ratings recommended should be the same as if the disability or disabilities were incurred in the service, rating each disability separately." In a letter to the Commissioner of Pensions, dated May 23, 1893, this same Medical Referee, in answer to inquiry as to the practice in rating act of June 27 cases under the Re sublican administration, stated that "the inability of the applicant to perform manual labor was not taken into consideration."

Within three years from the promulgation o' this Order 164, more than threequarters of a million claims were filed under the act of June 27, 1890, and 459.155 pensioners were placed upon the rolls under it. Order 164 established a practice in the bureau which disregarded the basic requirements of the law, and put hundreds of thousands of pensioners upon the rolls whom Congress never intended to reward. The gratitude of the nation to its defenders was preyed upon, and the Treasury robbed in the soldier's name.

Under laws prior to June 27, 1890, rates of pension were fixed without regard to the capacity of the pensioner to earn a support by manual labor, while under the act of June 27, 1890, the condition was imperative that there must be a disability incapacitating for the performance of manual labor to obtain a support. There are 21 disabilities not specified by law but fixed by the Commissioner of Pensions es tablishing rates of pension under laws prior to June 27, 1890, which are rated at $12 and upwards; and by Order 164 were rated under the law of 1890 by the Republican Commissioner at $12 per month. To illustrate :

The loss of an eye; nearly total deafness of one ear and slight of o'her; loss of thumb and index finger; or the loss of a thumb, finger and toe was rated at $12 per month or more; then the mandate of the order and the practice under it was that a claimant under the act of 1890 should be rated at $12 per month, although Congress designed that no man should receive $12 per month except for disabilities which render him wholly unable to earn a support by manual labor. Stiffness of a shoulder, elbow, knee, ankle or wrist joint-do these render a man whol y unable to perform manual labor? Does the loss of an eye or the deafness of anear wholly incapacitate one? Such has been the practice of the bureau under Republican administrations, and millions of dollars of the people's money wrongfully paid out. Loss of little toe and little finger and small varicocele, without complications, incurred 20 years o longer after the close of the war, entitled the app icant, according to Raum's practice, to the minimum rating under the act of June 27, 1890 and men were pensioned for baldness, bunions, and corns. So flagrantly at vari ance with the requirements of the law of June 27, 1890, were the practices of the Republican Commissioner that the Republican Secretary of the Interior, j.st two months after the rebuke administered by the Republican reverses of 1892, issued the decision of January 7, 1893, and sought to restore to something like a just basis

the practice of the department under the act of June 27, 1890. This is known as the Weike decision, rescinding Order No. 164, and establishing the principle :

(1) That the basis of rates under the act of June 27, 1890, is inability to earn a support by reason of incapacity for manual labor due to disability not the result of vicious habits.

(2) Schedule of nominal rates will not be added together to make up a rate under said act, but the rate will be based on the combined effect of all the causes involved upon the applicant's capacity for manual labor. (Assistant Secretary Bussey to Commissioner Raum.)

Previous to the Weike decision the Bureau had been allowing 78 2-10 per cent of all claims examined, but immediately after this decision allowances fell to 33 per cent of the claims examined, less than half the rate at which pensions were allowed immediately prior thereto.

During the six months previous to this decision 43,683, or an average of 7,280, army and navy original invalid certificates weekly were issued under the act of June 27, 1890, by the Republican Commissioner (Raum); during the six subsequent months (three of which were under the Republicans and three under the new Democratic administration) 18,608, or a weekly average of 3,101—only 42 6-10 per cent of this class of certificates, the only kind affected by this decision-were issued. On this basis fully 170,000 of the 311,300 pensioners of this class placed upon the rolls under the act of June 27, 1890, by the Republican administration in two and a half years have no just right to be there, and more than $68,000,000 paid to them was absolutely given away without authority of law.

When a single decision like that had the effect of reducing allowances more than one-half, was it not high time to raise the question as to whether the act of June 27, 1890, was being honestly and properly administered? So great was the reduction of allowances under this decision that ex-Commissioner Tanner, in an inter view in a Washington paper, demanded that President Harrison require the decision to be abrogated, or it would depopulate the pension rolls.

BENNETT DECISION.

The principle of procedure under the act of June 27, 1890, as laid down in the Weike decision was made more forcible on the accession of the Democratic party to power by the decision of Assistant Secretary Reynolds, May 27, 1893, in the case of Charles T. Bennett, wherein it was affirmed "that the basis of pension under section 2. of the act of June 27, 1890, is incapacity due to any permanent mental or physical disability not the result of vicious habits to such a degree as renders the claimant unable to earn a support by manual labor. * * * Neither the Secretary of the Interior nor the Commissioner of Pensions can, by order or by practice, supersede an act of Congress. The power of the Department, so far as its orders and practice are concerned, is limited to an execution of the law; it ceases when an effort is made to supersede the law.

THE BOARD OF REVISION AND AUTHORITY FOR SUSPENSIONS.

The showing that made it appear certain that under Order 164 many pensions were illegally granted caused the Commissioner of Pensions under the foregoing decision (Bennett) of May 27, 1893, to organize a board of revision composed of the best men in the Bureau regardless of political complexion. They were required to examine cases allowed under the act of June 27, 1890, and pick out such

as had no legal or equitable basis to rest upon, "but with instructions to disturb no case where by the most liberal construction of the evidence the right to the pension could be sustained under any law. In cases where it was believed that pension could not be sustained and another medical examination was thought necessary, the payment of the pension was ordered to be suspended pending investigation, according to the practice of the Bureau from the beginning, and at the proper time the usual sixty days notice was given to the pens oner within which he could ask for a medical examination or supply further evidence to his right to pension."

This Board of Revision, up to December 21, 1893, when the act was passed declaring a pension to be a vested right, and requiring thirty days notice before suspension, took the blankets off 12,548 cases issued under Order 164. After a careful re-examination, guided by Order No. 240 of Commissioner Lochren, it was found that 8,461, or 67 per cent of them, were entitled to the pensi »n originally allowed and the payment of pension was immediately ordered to be resumed; 568 were reduced to smaller rates than those wrongfully given; 701 were dropped from the rolls, as it was shown they were not entitled to pensions under any law, and 2,818 were still suspended and undergoing further investigation at the date of the passage of the act of December 21, 1893, since which time payment has been resumed in these cases under the terms of this act.

POWER TO SUSPEND.

The power to suspend current payments of pension, and upon satisfactory proof to drop the names of pensioners from the rolls, lies in the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of Pensions. This view finds approval and confirmation in the following: Kellogg vs. Waite and trustee, 12 Allen, Mass., 530; United States vs. Hall, 98 U. S., 357; sections 4692 and 4693, R. S. U. S., and prior and subsequent acts, which prescribe the nature of the conditions precedent to title. Being conditions precedent nothing can defeat them and they must co-exist before the title is perfected. If through fraud or mistake the Government is deceived or imposed upon and a pension certificate issues, no legal title arises because the necessary conditions of proof and fact do not exist, and the Government has the right to withhold or vacate every muniment of title that lacks the fundamental legal eleme ts. The practice of suspension has been the practice of the Bureau, followed since as far back as 1819, and has prevailed without interruption through all administrations. It is in line with the assertion of the right by successive Secretaries, and was asserted in the case of certificate numbered 70,032, by Secretary Delano, who held that if there was an improper allowance either through fraud or error suspensions were warranted; in certificate number 107,574, by Secretary Schurz, and by Secretary Zach. Chandler, the soldier's friend, who was Secretary of the Interior in 1875, and who by telegraph directed H. G. Sickel, United States Pension Agent at Philadelphia, to suspend payment of pension in every case which had been prosecuted by the following attorneys: Joseph E. Devitt & Co., E. B. Jackson, Francis Register, Matthews, Poulson & Co., et al.

This suspension order, just prior to the September, 1875, payment, must have affected nearly every pensioner residing in the city and county of Philadelphia, as well as those of the surrounding forty-six counties in Pennsylvania and all the State of Delaware, which comprised the district paid at the Philadelphia agency that year. $3,447,254.26 were paid to the 27,740 pensioners on the rolls in Pennsylvania and Delaware during the year ending June 30, 1875. As the Philadelphia agency com.

prised more than half the State of Pennsylvania and all of Delaware, it will be perceived that the number of suspensions must have been many thousands.

It has been heralded thorughout the country that nearly 13,000 pensions had been suspended by the Democratic administration, but these patriots who love the soldier so well that they do not hesitate to alarm and harass him by lying reports, do not state that out of the exact number suspended (12,548) 4,095 of that nu nber are foreign residents, whose pensions terminated July 1, 1893, by act of Congress passed March 1, 1893, and approved by Benjamin Harrison.

STATEMENTS OF FORMER REPUBLICAN COMMISSIONERS RELATIVE TO FRAUDS, DROPPINGS, ETC.

When the urgent deficiency bill was before Congress last March, and Democratic Representatives were asking for sufficient money for the payment of special examiners to purge the pension roll of frauds, they were confronted by Republicans with such remarks as these: "The whole object and purpose is to pay the 'spies and secret agents' to be put upon the track of the old soldier, to shadow him in his outgoings and incomings."

Suspension was referred to as if it were a new trick on the part of the Democrats, and frauds were said to exist only in the imagination of Southern Brigadiers. They are unmindful of the fact that the whole special examination system was of their own creation, as may be seen by a scrutiny of the annual reports of the earlier Republican Commissioners urging in unequivocal terms that the pension system under the old ex parte methods were reeking with fraud, and each annual report is burdened with the clamors of these Republican Commissioners for an enlargement of the powers conferred upon special agents by section 4744, R. S. So thoroughly has ɩne work gone on since then that now substantially every United States court in the country has its calendar from the Pension Bureau of crimes in the procuring or efforts to procure fraudulent pensions. From April 1, 1893, to Juue 2, 1894, in the past year alone, the small force of 182 special examiners in the field, made 237 arrests, procured 531 indictments, 215 convictions, and 93 sentences of persons charged with criminal violations of the penal statutes in relation to pensions, and 74 attorneys were suspended and disbarred for complicity in these crimes, saving to the Government in first paymen's a'one the enormous sum of $2,702,760.88, that would have gone to these fraudulent claimants.

In the Month of May, 1894, alone, $398,992.87 was saved to the Government from this source, and from April 1, 1893, to June 1, 1894, $29,538.79 of money improperly and illegally received as pensions was collected and refunded to the Government.

For the nine years from 1874 to 1882, inclusive, 3,283 names were dropped from the rolls, over 18,000 were suspended pending investigation, thousands of pensions were reduced, and the sum of $4,344,954.36 was saved to the Treasury. Upwards of 600 persons were prosecuted, indicted, convicted or sentenced for criminal violations of the penal statutes in pension claims.

Thus it will be seen that pension frauds held high carnival in the golden age of Republican supremacy as in later days when President Harrison's Attorney-General (W. H. H. Miller) was led to say: "I have never before had my eyes opened to the enormity of the frauds which are being practiced upon the General Government by applicants for pension, and I am free to admit that I have not before appreciated the degree of ease with which applications for pension may be prosecuted in the Pension Office at

Washington, and pensions granted upon affidavits which have no grounding in the common principles of truth. It was a revelation to me."

Droppings of large numbers of names from the pension rolls for various causes is not a recent practice peculiar to the present administration. but has been occasioned every year through all administrations, Republican and Democratic alike. During the year ending June 30, 1881, Commissioner Dudley dropped from the rolls for all causes including deaths, 10,712 names when the pension roll was only $50,000,000 annually. In 1882, he dropped 11,446, when the roll was $54,000,000. In 1883, he dropped 20,997, when the roll was $60,000,000.

In 1889, Commissioner Raum dropped 16,507, when the roll was $89,000,000. In 1890, he dropped 20,319, when the roll was $106,000,000. In 1891 he dropped 20,525, when the roll was $118,000,000. In 1892 he dropped 25,303, when the roll was $141,000,000. In 1893, Commissioner Lochren dropped from the rolls on account of death, remarriage, legal limitation of minors, failure to claim pension, and for all other causes 33,690, 4,095 of whom were foreigners dropped under the act of March 1, 1893, (approved by a Republican President,) leaving 29,595 as the total number otherwise dropped, 2,296 of whom were dropped mainly for fraud and excessive rating under Order 164, when the roll contained the names of 966,012 pensioners, who received $158,800,437.35.

DISCRIMINATIONS IN FAVOR OF NEW LAW AND AGAINST OLD LAW CLAIMANTS.

Three hundred and seventy- even thousand two hundred and three invalid received pension under the act of June 27, 1890, and only 365,403 under former laws. 82,132 invalids and 72,482 widows receive $8 p r month under the act of June 27, 1890, while only 63,790 of these two classes (invalids and widows) receive this amount under the general law. 214,379 receive $12 per month under the act of June 27, 1890, while only 151,660 receive this amount under the general law. A contemplation of these and foregoing facts shows that if the justice and usefulness of any system for the bestowal of pensions depend upon the uniformity of its operation that the Republican administration has fallen woefully short of a proper appreciation of the beneficent design underlying the pension system in discriminating against particular localities, for partisan ends, and against the wounded or invalid soldiers whose disabilities were incurred in the service and line of duty, or are directly traceable thereto, and in favor of a less worthy class.

UNEQUAL AND UNFAIR RATINGS RESULTING FROM LAX PRACTICES OF REPUBLICAN AD

MINISTRATIONS.

Prior to December 4, 1891, the rate for loss of sight of an eye was $8 per month. Those placed on the rolls prior to this time, under the act of June 27, 1890 for loss of sight of an eye are receiving $8 per month while those placed on the rolls since that date were given $8 per month to December 4, 1891, and $12 thereafter.

The same incongruities prevail in the ratings in regard to hernias, deafness, etc. There are, therefore, now on the pension roll two sets of pensioners under both the new and the old law, the former reciving one rate of pension and the latter a different rate for the same disability.

Under ruling 249 (November 2, 1892), when the change of time of reduction of rates for some degrees of deafness was made, there were added to the schedule several minor degrees of deafness, so that now it is possible for all who heretofore (prior to the issuing of Order 257, February 28, 1894,) had their pensions for deafne