Interesting Facts Reported by Secretary Fall of Interior Was it not Douglas Jerrold who said that there were three kinds of untruths: ties, dammed lies and sta-fistics? Pension statistics are not on this black list, however according to the "New York Times." They mirror only the truth, and mighty interesting they are sometimes. In his annual report Secretary Fall of the Department of the Interior says that there were on the pension roll at the end of the fiscal year 566,053 beneficiaries, of whom 243,520 were Civil War soldiers and 281,327 were widows, minor children and dependents. There were still pensioners of the War of 1812, after 108 years, 64 altogether, but of course they were widows. The survivors of the Mexican War drawing pensions were 109, to whom must be added 2,145 widows. Men there was a very distinguished group: 365 army and navy medal o: tenour men, in recelps of @ special pension $10 a month. the pension ust was at the nood in lvl, when 997,735 names were on it. Secretary rail does not bring this out in nis report. shut ne says that "the monest number of Civil War soldiers on the roll was in 1893, when there were 745,822." That was the year of the Spanish War, 33 years aiter the close of the Civil War. The Civil War widows, he adds, were greatest in number in_1¥1z—003,373 of them.
It 1s sigmiucant that "the amount disbursea in the payment of pensions for the year was $258,715,- 642, as against $213,295,314 for the preceding year." If we go back four years, to 1917, we tind that the sum of pension disbursements was $160,895,053 (Report of the Commuissiouer o* Pensions for 1917), or nearly $100,000,000 less than the expenditure in the fiscal year ended June 30, 1921. To what was the increase due by the time 1920- 21 rolled round? There were fewer combatant survivors and fewer widows by a good many thousands. The number of deaths of Civil War soldiers in 1921 alone, according Secretary Fall, was 24,775, a8 compared with 27,871 in 1920; and the deaths of widows, minor children and dependents in 1921 were 20,- 338, as compared with 21,752 in 1920.
Tun War or 1812.
Survivors of the Mexican War have been going fast. There were only 109 on the roll on June 30, 1921. In 1916 the number was 513. The last pensioner of the War of 1812 to die was Hiram Cronk of Ava, Oneida County N. Y., who expired on May 13, 1905, at the age of 105. On June 30, 1916, more than a century after the close of that war, 115 widows of soldiers were drawing pensions. Fifty-one of them are atill living. In 1873 there were 18,266 combatant pensioners of the War of 1812 surviving. Eight years later 26,029 widows of soldiers of the War of 1812 were drawing pensions. As late as 1906, 123 years efter the Revolutionary War,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.