A pension bill for dependents, such as Cleveland had vetoed, now went triumphantly through Congress.* It granted pensions of from six to twelve dollars a month to all persons who had served for ninety days in the Civil War and had thereby been incapacitated for manual labor to such a degree as to be unable to support themselves.Pensions were also granted to widows, minor children, and dependent parents.This law brought in an enormous flood of claims in passing, upon which it was the policy of the Pension Bureau to practice great indulgence.In one instance, a pension was granted to a claimant who had enlisted but never really served in the army as he had deserted soon after entering the camp.He thereupon had been sentenced to hard labor for one year and made to forfeit all pay and allowances.After the war, he had been convicted of horse stealing and sent to the state penitentiary in Wisconsin.While serving his term, he presented a pension claim supported by forged testimony to the effect that he had been wounded in the battle of Franklin.The fraud was discovered by a special examiner of the pension office, and the claimant and some of his witnesses were tried for perjury, convicted, and sent to the state penitentiary at Joliet, Illinois.After serving his time there, he posed as a neglected old soldier and succeeded in obtaining letters from sympathetic Congressmen commending his case to the attention of the pension office, but without avail until the Act of 1890 was passed.He then put in a claim which was twice rejected by the pension office examiners, but each time the decision was overruled, and in the end he was put upon the pension roll.This case is only one of many made possible by lax methods of investigating pension claims.Senator Gallinger of New Hampshire eventually said of the effect of pension policy, as shaped by his own party with his own aid:
"If there was any soldier on the Union side during the Civil War who was not a good soldier, who has not received a pension, I do not know who he is.He can always find men of his own type, equally poor soldiers who would swear that they knew he had been in a hospital at a certain time, whether he was or not--the records did not state it, but they knew it was so--and who would also swear that they knew he had received a shock which affected his hearing during a certain battle, or that something else had happened to him; and so all those pension claims, many of which are worthless, have been allowed by the Government, because they were 'proved.'"* June 27, 1890.
The increase in the expenditure for pensions, which rose from $88,000,000 in 1889 to $159,000,000 in 1893, swept away much of the surplus in the Treasury.Further inroads were made by the enactment of the largest river and harbor appropriation bill in the history of the country up to this time.Moreover, a new tariff bill was contrived in such a way as to impose protective duties without producing so much revenue that it would cause popular complaint about unnecessary taxation.A large source of revenue was cut off by abolishing the sugar duties and by substituting a system of bounties to encourage home production.
Upon this bill as a whole, Senator Cullom remarks in his memoirs that "it was a high protective tariff, dictated by the manufacturers of the country" who have "insisted upon higher duties than they really ought to have." The bill was, indeed, made up wholly with the view of protecting American manufactures from any foreign competition in the home market.
As passed by the House, not only did the bill ignore American commerce with other countries but it left American consumers exposed to the manipulation of prices on the part of other countries.Practically all the products of tropical America, except tobacco, had been placed upon the free list without any precaution lest the revenue thus surrendered might not be appropriated by other countries by means of export taxes.Blaine, who was once more Secretary of State, began a vigorous agitation in favor of adding reciprocity provisions to the bill.When the Senate showed a disposition to resent his interference, Blaine addressed to Senator Frye of Maine a letter which was in effect an appeal to the people, and which greatly stirred the farmers by its statement that "there is not a section or a line in the entire bill that will open the market for another bushel of wheat or another barrel of pork." The effect was so marked that the Senate yielded, and the Tariff Bill, as finally enacted, gave the President power to impose certain duties on sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides imported from any country imposing on American goods duties, which, in the opinion of the President, were "reciprocally unequal and unreasonable." This more equitable result is to be ascribed wholly to Blaine's energetic and capable leadership.
Pending the passage of the Tariff Bill, the Senate had been wrestling with the trust problem which was making a mockery of a favorite theory of the Republicans.They had held that tariff protection benefited the consumer by the stimulus which it gave to home production and by ensuring a supply of articles on as cheap terms as American labor could afford.There were, however, notorious facts showing that certain corporations had taken advantage of the situation to impose high prices, especially upon the American consumer.It was a campaign taunt that the tariff held the people down while the trusts went through their pockets, and to this charge the Republicans found it difficult to make a satisfactory reply.
