The Durham Daily Globe

Pension Reform.
[Harpers Weekly.]
No man acquainted with his subject
will deny that the pension attorneys have
been the most powerful agency in procuring
extravagant and vicious pension
legislation, a lax construction of the law,
and a loose administration of it in the
pension office, not to speak of the many
thousands of cases in which they seduced
people who otherwise would never have
thought of it to apply for pensions,
whether they were entitled to them or
not. The pension attorney should be
abolished. The pension attorney's business
should be done by the clerical force
of the pension office itself. If necessary
a special division should be established
to answer all inquiries, to give whatever
information is asked for, to aid the claimant
in making his application and in getting
up his documents for proof, in short,
to do without charge all the things now
done by the attorney-except the crooked
ones. This can be done and should have
been done long ago. It will give the
claimant every reasonable facility, and
be a great economy to him as well as to
the government. The attorney may then
be dispensed with, and can properly be
excluded from practice before the pension
bureau. Thus the most powerful
agency of evil will be put out of business.
The second measure is the publication of
the names of the pensioner, together with
the nature of the disability for which
they are pensioned, and the amount of
the pension paid to them. in the localities
in which the pensions are drawn, the
lists to be exhibited in some public place
such as the post-office. Nothing will be
more effective in deterring false claimants
and in bringing fraudulent pensioners
to light than to put them under
the surveillance of their neighbors. It
will do better service to the administration
than hundreds of special agents.
These measures will require some outlay
of money. no doubt : but while the
cost will count by thousands, the saving
will count by millions. This policy will
be fiercely resisted by the pension attorneys,
as well as by all those who draw
pensions on false pretences, and the administration
will be wildly denounced
for adopting it. But it may be sure that
the public opinion of the country will be
on its side, and the more fearlessly it
proceeds on this line, the heartier and
more general will be the popular approval.