West Virginia Argus

ONE THOUSAND MILLIONS.

A Washington dispatch says that a thousand million dollars is the sum which the Arrears of Pensions bill will cost, as it is now estimated. As the tendency has been to under-estimate, the chances are that the sum will be found to be larger rather than smaller when the cost is finally ascertained. The old roll, estimating at a low figure, would require an average expenditure of about $20,000,000 a year for 25 years. That is a half a billion more, so that the total sum which in the next 25 years will be expended in the payment of pensions is not far from the colossal figure of one billion and a half, or more than one-third of the cost of the late war. The adoption last week of that clause in the Legislative Appropriation bill providing for increasing the clerical force of the Pension Office by 1200 clerks indicates that the House is ready to go with those who have laid out the Republican programme. That programme is to push the payment of the arrears through as fast as possible. The men who are managing this thing estimate that the additional force of clerks will make it possible to grant applications for arrears in the next fiscal year amounting to $100,000,000, and this sum is already fixed in the Pension Appropriation bill. Next they think that this large force will have cleaned the desks in the fiscal year 1883 for the payment of $150,000,000, in the succeeding year $100,000,000, and the next year $75,000,000. This programme involves the payment, therefore, on account of arrears of $425,000,000 in the next four years. It is estimated that in the next ten years the sum required will be $740,000,000, and that not until 1893 will the annual allotments fall below $50,000,000, and not until 1901 will they fall below $27,000,000, the sum which was paid in the year prior to the passage of the Arrears act. This enormous business is coming the like of which was never known by any nation before, civilized or uncivilized. We have by this bill practically added to our debt almost the sum by which we have reduced it since the war. The Government, so far as indebtedness is concerned, owes about as much money as it did when the war closed and this debt was deliberately created by a bill whose effects nobody seemed to realize, when it passed Congress. It is probable that very few members of Congress to-day realize what this Arrears bill is going to cost. The debates and speeches thus far do not show that they do. If they did, some effort would be made to guard against the frauds to which this bill gives opportunity. The late Commissioner estimates those fraudulent claims at as high as ten per cent. on the whole sum. If his estimate be correct, and there is not the least doubt of it, the country must contemplate the payment of $150,000,000 from the Treasury obtained by fraud. The House passed the clause increasing the force, but not one step has been taken to guard against further frauds. Again, it does not seem to have occurred to members that the payment of this sum is sure, by and by, to have a very serious effect upon the Treasury. The payment of $100,000,000 next year can be made probably without great difficulty, but it will be a tight pinch in 1884, to pay the $150,000,000 and not make the sinking fund suffer for it. At all events the probabilities are that after next year there will be very little reduction of the Bonded debt until these pension payments are made. Then some next year the Geneva award, $5,000,000, public buildings, say $5,000,000, the new navy, $10,000,000, and the repairs of the monitors, $500,000—if these appropriations, amounting to about $80,000,000, are made—the Secretary of the Treasury will probably have to do some very skillful financiering to prevent a deficit in the sinking fund, even if customs duties run as high as they have this year, and the internal revenue is not decreased. The Arrears of Pensions bill in the near future will be the centre around which the financial policy of the Treasury must be attracted, and yet few members of Congress seem to realize it. The Senate, perhaps, may give these matters some consideration, as the bill goes to it now.