fair discussion and action. The people who do not understand the gag rules of this House are watching with wonder and blaming their Representatives for not forcing a vote on the most important questions of the day."

It must not be forgotten that my colleague, the honorable and gallant Col. Matson, is the chairman of the Invalid Pensions Committee; my much esteemed and ancient friend, Mr. Holman, chairman of the com. mittee on Public Lands; and my colleague, Mr. Town shend, of Illinois, whose district joins mine across the Wabash River, is chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs.

If I am correctly informed, no report has been made by the said committee on either of my bills; and hence, under the rules of this House, it is impossible to press either of them for further legislative action. With over one hundred and ninety bills in favor of the rights of ex-soldiers, referred to said committee, no day or days have as yet been set apart for their consideration.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers at this and former sessions have petitioned for redress and relief in vain. Their petitions now are never read in the session of the House, but are buried in the box at the feet of the Speaker, and are then sent silently to the archives of the nation.

Verily, that great and grand old right of petition has lost its ancient force and grandeur. Its denial once by George III. was assigned in the Declaration of American Independence as one of the causes which led to the liberty of this country. May its virtual suppression here fail to lose that which it formerly helped to gain!

That there has been a studied and systematic course of opposition pursued by my colleagues on the other side of this House against all general pension legisla. tion cannot be honestly denied by any member.

To show how this denial has been systematically pursued I will present a few facts that cannot be controverted.

My colleague, Mr. Johnston of Indiana, in his speech in this House on the 10th of July, shows what efforts he has made to have days assigned and set apart for such legislation. He says:

"On the twenty-first day of May last I offered the following preamble and resolution:

"Whereas the Committee on Invalid Pensions of this House has reported House bill No. 9961, by Report No. 2120, entitled "A bill relating to the arrears of pensions," with recommendation that it do pass; and

"Whereas said committee in said report estimate that said bill, if passed, will cause the expenditure of $250,000,000; and

"Whereas all political parties profess to be in favor of granting to the Union soldiers of 1861 to 1865 liberal pensions for service rendered; and

"Whereas on the nineteenth day of January last, House bill No. 3345, granting a pension to all such soldiers, was referred to said committee; and

"Whereas it is important that said several propositions should be disposed of before any bill is passed materially reducing the revenues of the country: Therefore,

"Resolved, That the Committee on Invalid Pensions be discharged from the further consideration of said House bill No. 3345, and that said bill, and said bill No. 9961, reported by said committee, be made a special order for Friday, the twenty-fifth day of May, and that the consideration thereof shall continue from day to day until they are disposed of.'

"This resolution, asking that these bills should be considered, was, by the ruling of the Speaker, sent to the Committee on Rules; and, strange to say, since the introduction of that resolution there has never been a report from that committee, although Mr. Cannon of Illinois, representing the minority of the committee, stated publicly upon this floor that the Republicans composing the minority had gone to the Speaker, who is ex-officio chairman thereof, and requested that the committee be called together for the purpose of taking action thereon, and further stating that there had been no meeting of the committee.

"Fearing that the Speaker, in the multiplicity of duties that are crowding upon him, had overlooked the matter, I again, on the ninth day of June, offered the following resolution :

"Resolved, That Wednesday, the thirteenth day of June, after the morning hour, be set apart for the consideration of House bill No. 9961, granting arrears of

that the consideration thereof shall be continued from day to day until the same is disposed of' which also went to the Committee on Rules, and which has suffered the like fate of its predecessor." The Congressional Record will show other efforts in the same direction without success.

In May last the Republican members of the House, becoming dissatisfied with the many evasions and long delays in regard to pension legislation, signed a request or petition and delivered it to the Committee on Rules, of which the Speaker, Mr. Carlisle, is chairman. To the Committee on Rules of the House of Representatives:

GENTLEMEN: The undersigned members of the House of Representatives, feeling the great need of prompt legislation for the relief of Union veterans and their dependent ones, respectfully urge your committee to set apart, at as early a day as possible, three or four days for the consideration of general pension legislation. J. C. Burrows, D. B. Henderson, E. H. Funston, George W. Steele, William Cogswell, James O'Donnell, E. B. Taylor, Jacob Romeis, George W. Crouse, Nils P. Haugen, Henry W. Seymour, J. Lyman, J. J. Belden, William Warner, M. M. Boothman, Nelson Dingley, jr., Francis W. Rock. well, H. J. Spooner, H. F. Finley, William W. Grout, J. H. Ketcham, Smedley Darlington, John Lind, M. S. Brewer, Oscar L. Jackson, Robert M. Yardley, C. P. Wickham, John A. Hiestand, A. R. Anderson, G. E. Bowden, Louis E. Atkinson, Franklin Bound, O. B. Thomas, E. S. Osborne, Edward Scull, J. B. Cheadle, Thomas Ryan, J. T. Maffett, Knute Nelson, Thomas S. Flood, Th. H. Bayley Browne, A. J. Hopkins, Binger Hermann, William E. Mason, William McKinley, jr., C. H. Grosvener, John G. Sawyer, Charles E. Brown, B. W. Perkins, J. H. Rowell, John M. Farquhar, Daniel Kerr, Charles S. Baker, Thomas M. Bayne, John B. Weber, W. G. Hunter, George M. Thomas, L. B. Caswell, J. G. Cannon, R. R. Hitt, John Dalzell, John Kean, jr., W. H. Wade, J. T. Johnston, E. N. Morrill, J. H. Gallinger, C. A. Boutelle, John D. Long, R. M. La Follette, H. C. Lodge, William W. Morrow, Henry H. Bingham, L. E. Payson, A. C. Thomp son, Benjamin Butterworth, Richard Guenther, Robert P. Kennedy, George Hires, John Nichols, F. C. Bunnell, George. West, Jehu Baker, E. H. Conger, J. W. Stewart, W. D. Owen, W. G. Laidlaw, P. S. Post, John H. Gear, Charles N. Brumm, O. S. Gifford, Alvin P. Hovey, William D. Kelley, Welty McCullogh, E. P. Allen, B. M. Cutcheon, William E. Fuller, S. L. Milliken, J. J. Pugsley, A. X. Parker, John A. Anderson, George E. Adams, William Vandever, Albert P. Fitch, S. V. White, A. J. Holmes, John Patton, J. McKenna, Charles H. Allen, Thomas J. Henderson, H. C. McCormick, W. A. Gest, S. R. Peters, G. G. Symes, N. Goff, E. 8. Williams, David Wilber, J. Laird, Charles A. Russell, J. Yost, W. O. Arnold, Joseph D. Taylor, George W. E. Dorsey, Thomas M. Browne, Ralph Plumb, Charles O'Neill, I. S. Struble, J. S. Sherman, L. C. Houk, N. Felton, Stephen T. Hopkins, E. J. Turner, N. W. Nutting, William Walter Phelps.

And now, Mr. Chairman, we are here on the 2d day of August with all our requests ignored and unheeded, and the petitions and prayers of thousands of exsoldiers unread and disregarded. The history of legislation presents no parallel to this outrage upon the rights of the people.

Need I ask why these ex-soldiers are refused a hearing? Need I ask who refuses them? The Democratic side of this House dare not vote upon the bills which I have presented, for they know it would be the political death-knell of every Northern Democrat who should vote against either of them. They know the Presidential election in November is close at hand, and that they are in danger of the veto of either the President or their constituents.

You

Do you ask for still stronger proof that the Democracy as a party are still opposed to the ex-soldiers as the majority of them were from 1861 to 1865? have the answer in the President's message, and the provisions of the Mills tariff bill which they have lately passed in this House by a majority of 13. Does not every ex-soldier know that if that bill be

quired a two-thirds vote, it was passed by Republican votes. Had it been left to the Democratic vote, under the suspension of the rules, the bill would have been defeated by more than twenty-five. Under the bill there has been issued additional certificates to the number of 10,092; and this issue of certificates is due to the credit of the Republican party.

The Mexican Pension Bill, as it became a law, was strictly a Senate bill and a Republican measure, altogether different in character from the Democratic measure that originally passed the House. Under that law there has been issued 21,704 additional certificates up to the date of the report of the Commissioner of Pensions.

That gives, under these three acts, 133,364 additional certificates out of the 168,000 additional certificates which are claimed should be credited to the Democratic party, but which of right are due to the credit of the Republican party.

The "Widows' Arrears Act," passed at the present session of Congress and approved June 7, 1888, was a measure to date the pensions of widows back to the date of death of (the soldiers) their husbands. The chairman of the House sub-committee in charge of the bill, Mr. Foran, a Democratic member from Ohio, raised a point of order against the amendment. The point of order was overruled and the amendment adopted. The bill with the amendment went to the Senate, and there a motion was made by a Democratic Senator, Mr. Cockrell of Missouri, to strike out the words "which have been, or," intending thereby to cut off all widows whose pensions were allowed from July 1, 1880, up to the present date, amounting to about 10,000. A division was had, and the vote was as follows: For striking out, Democrats, 20; against striking out, 23: 22 of the latter being Republicans and 1 Democrat.

So ten thousand widows can thank the Republican party for their arrears.

This pension legislation accounts for the vast increase in pension certificates. With the aid of these new laws and of the additional and efficiently trained clerical force, the present Democratic Commissioner of Pensions ought to have turned out at least 150,000 more pension certificates than has been done; but probably his time, and that of some of his subordinates, has been too much occupied in getting up Democratic campaign literature, in accordance with President Cleveland's Picksniffian notions of 'civil service" and offensive partisan

ship."

66

PART XV.

Senator Vest's venomous Speech in the Senate, Feb. 29, 1888, showing the Southern Democratic hatred still burns.

In the U. S. Senate, Feb. 29, 1888 [see

speaking to an amendment to the Senate Bill (S. 181) "granting pensions to ex-soldiers and sailors who are incapacitated for the performance of manual labor, and providing for pensions to dependent relatives of deceased soldiers and sailors," known as the Dependent Pension Bill, said:

MR. VEST. I wish to say a word in regard to the amendment of the Senator from Iowa. Is it possible that the Senate of the United States are to be asked to pension any man who is suffering from the infirmifavor of such a proposition. I think I am perfectly ties of age? I do not think there can be a man in competent to support myself, and not be dependent on anybody else; and yet I know that I am suffering Commissioner of Pensions is to decide what are the from the infirmities of age. Is it possible that the infirmities of age? I believe that physiologists inform us that the result of six thousand years of experience is that every man over fifty years of age commences to go down hill, and he goes very rapidly. Facilis est tion that every man over fifty is to be embraced within descensus Averni. This amounts to a simple declarathis pension bill. Who is to determine what are the infirmities of age? It seems to me that this amendment ought not to be adopted, although I am "a mere lookeron here in Venice, and possibly have no right to say any thing in regard to it.

When General Lee surrendered at Appomattox there were but eight thousand muskets left of that splendid army which had fought the world in arms, and had been battered and beaten back by overwhelming num. bers for four long years. Out of companies that went into that terrible strife of one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and eighty men, but ten or twelve to-day is filled with maimed and crippled soldiers, who, amid shot and shell and sabre-stroke, fought for their honest convictions as men have seldom fought before. They ask no pensions. God be thanked, they would not take them. They are not in almshouses; and no man has ever seen one of them begging for bread.

returned back to their kindred and homes. The South

Whence comes this talk of Federal soldiers in alms

houses? They are not there. I am tired and sick of being forced into this procession of robbery and pretence and hypocrisy in the name of the true and gal lant soldiers of the Union. I have personal friends among them. I have said before, and I repeat here to-day, that I will give to the disabled or dependent orphans, the last acre of land and the last dollar of soldiers of the Federal Army, their widows and money that belongs to this country, and I would have done the same to the soldiers of the Confederacy if God had blessed our cause.

the soldiers. We have spent since the close of the We hear this talk that we have not done enough for war, $883,400,000 in pensions, a sum unparalleled in the history of the whole world. We passed laws that preferred them to appointments for office above their fellow-citizens, and to-day we are told that we owe them a debt of eternal gratitude because they did not seize with mailed hand the Government of this country, and convert it to their own purposes.

The great military and political organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, throws its iron glove into the debates of Congress, and sends to us bills through its accredited Senators; and when the Presi dent of the United States honestly and bravely discharged his executive duty and vetoed an enactment which he considered improper, he was threatened by the officers of this organization with personal insult if he dared to make his presence known in the city where it held its last meeting.

There is a limit to human endurance. I have stood here and voted for these bills, coerced by my own position, because I have been a Confederate, although fare, and advancement of this country as any one could knew I was as honestly anxious for the glory, wel

But there is a limit to human patience on this subject, and I have reached it. I will be driven no further by claim-agents and pretenders in the garb of soldiers. To the honest and brave and real soldiers of the Union Army I am willing to vote any amount of pension; but I do not believe they are here asking for additional largess from the Government.

In this city are a corps of men engaged in inventing legislation to take more money out of the Federal Treasury. Here is the report of the Commissioner of Pensions showing that in 1879, when we passed the Arrears of-Pension Act, there were some 36,835 applications for invalid pensions. We passed that act, and in 1880 the applications jumped to 110,673. The war had closed in 1865; fifteen years had elapsed. Where were these 80,000 and more invalids who were entitled to pensions from this Government through all those fifteen years? They did not know that they needed the money; they did not know that they had been disabled; but the claim-agents invented a law, and when Congress put a limitation upon the time for applying, the number of applicants jumped in one single year, by the record, from 30,000 to 110,000, and the amount of disbursements from $30,000,000 to $57,000,000.

The pension-rolls show that out of 2,300,000 men enrolled in the Federal Army, 800,000 were disabled by disease or by shot and shell. Nearly 50 per cent of all the men enrolled in the Federal Army, according to the pension reports, are now applicants for pensions, or have been. Such mortality and such military execution have never been known in the history of the whole world. The Confederates were not properly equipped. We deprecated the quality of our powder. Our soldiers were half-clothed, and half-armed, and half-fed; yet, according to this report, making due allowance for the effects of climate and disease, every Confederate soldier disabled three of his adversaries.

There has been no such destruction in military annals since the children of Israel marched through the wilderness, and destroyed whole nations in a single day. Talk of marksmanship! Why, sir, we have read in the "Arabian Nights" of that Persian prince to whom a geni gave an arrow which went to its mark across whole continents, through mountains, over rivers, despising space in its flight. The arrow in the "Arabian Nights" was nothing to the bullet of the Confederate soldier. It must have hit two or more at one time, and struck where it was not aimed. It produced strange and subtle diseases, which lie dormant for twenty-five years in the system, and then suddenly break forth under the effect of some new pension law. Nearly 50 per cent of all these hosts to-day are ap.

I speak for no man but myself."

Mr. President, when is the auction to close? When are we to see the last and final bid, a service pension to every man who served in the Federal Army during the war? The proposition comes here now to pay a pension of 1 cent a day for the term of service. That will not satisfy the demand. Nothing but a service pension, in accordance with the demands of the claimagents, in accordance with the demands of the men who are making a business of pensions, will ever close this bidding for the highest office within the gift of the people.

What will be the expenditure of public money, if legislation goes on as has been the case within the last few years? Eight hundred and eighty-three millions have been expended since the close of the war. If this bill passes as amended now on the motion of the Senator from Kansas, it will take out of the national Treasury, in my judgment, from $100,000,000 to $150,000,000. I remember very well, in 1879, when the Arrears-of-Pension Act was before the Senate, we were told that $30,000,000 was the outside limit which would be called for by that act. Two hundred and forty millions would not to-day cover the expenditure, and still it is going on.

I have sat here and voted for pension bill after pension bill, for the reasons I have given. The Southern people, impoverished, cursed with war, pestilence, and famine, have paid, since the close of hostilities, out of their hard earnings, $240,000,000 of the enormous amount that is paid for pensions.

Mr. HAMPTON. Two hundred and ninety million dollars.

Mr. VEST. My friend from South Carolina says $290,000,000. Out of the $75,000,000 paid last year for pensions, the ruined people of the South paid $25,000,000. They have done it without complaint; they have done it without protest; and I stand here to-day as a Southern man, as a Senator of the United States, and I declare that I will not go one single step further in this unholy and wicked prostitution of the gratitude of a great people to the personal and mercenary ends that are now behind this movement. If Senators upon the opposite side seek to seize my words and convert them into a partisan meaning, let them do so. Partisan or non-partisan, my oath of office requires me to vote against this bill; and I say here, now, that I hope it may die the death in the other branch of the national Congress, and, if not there, at the hands of the Execu. tive. If that be unparliamentary, make the most of it.

"Pen

PART I.

quired a two-thirds vote, it was passed by Republican votes. Had it been left to the Democratic vote, under the suspension of the rules, the bill would have been defeated by more than twenty-five. Under the bill there has been issued additional certificates to the number of 10,092; and this issue of certificates is due to the credit of the Republican party.

The Mexican Pension Bill, as it became a law, was strictly a Senate bill and a Republican measure, altogether different in character from the Democratic measure that originally passed the House. Under that law there has been issued 21,704 additional certificates up to the date of the report of the Commissioner of Pensions.

That gives, under these three acts, 133,364 additional certificates out of the 168,000 additional certificates which are claimed should be credited to the Democratic party, but which of right are due to the credit of the Republican party.

The "Widows' Arrears Act," passed at the present session of Congress and approved June 7, 1888, was a measure to date the pensions of widows back to the date of death of (the soldiers) their husbands. The chairman of the House sub-committee in charge of the bill, Mr. Foran, a Democratic member from Ohio, raised a point of order against the amendment. The point of order was overruled and the amendment adopted. The bill with the amendment went to the Senate, and there a motion was made by a Democratic Senator, Mr. Cockrell of Missouri, to strike out the words "which have been, or," intending thereby to cut off all widows whose pensions were allowed from July 1, 1880, up to the present date, amounting to about 10,000. A division was had, and the vote was as follows: For striking out, Democrats, 20; against striking out, 23: 22 of the latter being Republicans and 1 Democrat.

So ten thousand widows can thank the Republican party for their arrears.

This pension legislation accounts for the vast increase in pension certificates. With the aid of these new laws and of the additional and efficiently trained clerical force, the present Democratic Commissioner of Pensions ought to have turned out at least 150,000 more pension certificates than has been done; but probably his time, and that of some of his subordinates, has been too much occupied in getting up Democratic campaign literature, in accordance with President Cleveland's Picksniffian notions of "civil service" and "offensive partisanship."

PART XV.

Senator Vest's venomous Speech in the Senate, Feb. 29, 1888, showing the Southern Democratic hatred still burns.

In the U. S. Senate, Feb. 29, 1888 [see

speaking to an amendment to the Senate Bill (S. 181) “granting pensions to ex-soldiers and sailors who are incapacitated for the performance of manual labor, and providing for pensions to dependent relatives of deceased soldiers and sailors," known as the Dependent Pension Bill, said:

MR. VEST. I wish to say a word in regard to the amendment of the Senator from Iowa. Is it possible that the Senate of the United States are to be asked to pension any man who is suffering from the infirmities of age? I do not think there can be a man in favor of such a proposition. I think I am perfectly competent to support myself, and not be dependent on anybody else; and yet I know that I am suffering Commissioner of Pensions is to decide what are the from the infirmities of age. Is it possible that the infirmities of age? I believe that physiologists inform us that the result of six thousand years of experience is that every man over fifty years of age commences to go down hill, and he goes very rapidly. Facilis est tion that every man over fifty is to be embraced within descensus Averni. This amounts to a simple declarathis pension bill. Who is to determine what are the infirmities of age? It seems to me that this amendment ought not to be adopted, although I am "a mere lookerany thing in regard to it. on here in Venice," and possibly have no right to say

almshouses either.

When General Lee surrendered at Appomattox there were but eight thousand muskets left of that splendid army which had fought the world in arms, and had been battered and beaten back by overwhelming numbers for four long years. Out of companies that went into that terrible strife of one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and eighty men, but ten or twelve returned back to their kindred and homes. The South to-day is filled with maimed and crippled soldiers, who, amid shot and shell and sabre-stroke, fought for their honest convictions as men have seldom fought before. They ask no pensions. God be thanked, they would not take them. They are not in almshouses; and no

man has ever seen one of them begging for bread.

Whence comes this talk of Federal soldiers in alms

houses? They are not there. I am tired and sick of being forced into this procession of robbery and pretence and hypocrisy in the name of the true and gallant soldiers of the Union. I have personal friends among them. I have said before, and I repeat here to-day, that I will give to the disabled or dependent soldiers of the Federal Army, their widows and orphans, the last acre of land and the last dollar of money that belongs to this country, and I would have done the same to the soldiers of the Confederacy if God had blessed our cause.

We hear this talk that we have not done enough for the soldiers. We have spent since the close of the war, $883,400,000 in pensions, a sum unparalleled in the history of the whole world. We passed laws that preferred them to appointments for office above their fellow-citizens, and to-day we are told that we owe them a debt of eternal gratitude because they did not seize with mailed hand the Government of this country, and convert it to their own purposes.

Grand Army of the Republic, throws its iron glove The great military and political organization, the into the debates of Congress, and sends to us bills through its accredited Senators; and when the President of the United States honestly and bravely discharged his executive duty and vetoed an enactment which he considered improper, he was threatened by the officers of this organization with personal insult if he dared to make his presence known in the city where it held its last meeting.

There is a limit to human endurance. I have stood here and voted for these bills, coerced by my own position, because I have been a Confederate, although fare, and advancement of this country as any one could knew I was as honestly anxious for the glory, wel