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PENSION FRAUDS

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 6, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 1.

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PENSION FRAUDS.

THAT those who imperiled their lives to defend and maintain a government in time of strife should be pensioned we heartily believe. The widows and children of those who were slain should be amply supported; against all honest pensioning and receivers of pension we would not utter one word. They deserve it and should have it. But it is very evident that there is a stupendous amount of fraud connected with the pension business which robs the government of millions of money. The following figures are at least striking:—
The pensioners of the United States Government now number over 975,000. The pensions appropriation in 1866 was $13,500,000; in 1876, $28,250,000; in 1886, $64,500,000; in 1896, $138,250,000. It will be seen that it has more than doubled in each decade since the close of the war. It is estimated that it will reach $141,000,000 this year. Commenting on this the Thrice-a-Week World says:—
“As there are 975,000 pensioners, one family in every fourteen in the country is largely supported by a collection of $2.00 from each member of the other thirteen families.
“But a better way of realizing the grab is by means of the tables of the probability of human life used by our life-insurance companies.
“Double the chances of life as shown by these tables.
“Assume that everybody who took part in the war was alive and well at the end of it.
“Assume that the average age of the participants was only thirty-two years in 1865.
“Assume that everybody in the army was married in 1865.
“Still you get this result: There ought to be now alive less than one hundred thousand soldiers and widows of soldiers who were wives at the end of the war.
“The pensioners outnumber the probable survivors nine to one.
“A miracle! A miracle!”
But this is only one of many of the great schemes of public and systematic robbery which indicate the increasing corruption and emphatically declare that the dissolution of all earthly rule and the coming of Christ are near at hand.