TO INSURE THE MEN IN THE ARMY AND NAVY

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

TO AMEND THE BUREAU OF INSURANCE ACT SO AS TO INSURE THE MEN IN THE ARMY AND NAVY.

MARION, OHIO, August 21, 1917.

Judge WILLIAM C. ADAMSON,

Chairman Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce,

Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR JUDGE: Referring to H. R. 5723, I have decided to submit the following comments, in accordance with your suggestion:

I regret that I could not be heard by your committee when I appeared, but realize it was impossible for you to give me a hearing on that day, and I had to leave for Ohio that night.

H. R. 5723, if enacted into law in its present form, would provide three separate and distinct things, to wit:

First. Financial support for dependent relatives of a soldier or sailor during his service.

Second. Insurance against death or material disablement in service.

Third. Pensions, under name of compensation, in case of death or permanent disability.

Now, as to the first two provisions mentioned, I desire to make no comment. In some form I believe both of these principles are wise and just, and I shall await the report of your committee concerning same.

As to the third provision of the bill-pensions-I firmly believe it should be stricken entirely from the measure for the following reasons:

First. Many members of the Committee on Pensions hold that your committee has no jurisdiction over any measure that seeks to amend, annul, or otherwise affect existing pension laws. I join with them in this view.

Second. If enacted in its present form, the bill would completely annul what is known as the geenral pension law. This law has, in practically its present 7 form, been in existence for more than 100 years. It provides certain and specific pensions at given rates, for disabilities due to wounds, injuries, and diseases incurred or contracted in service and line of duty from the date an application is filed. It requires positive proof that the disabilities are due to service and line of duty.

This law has covered the service of soldiers and sailors in the War of 1812, the earlier Indian wars, the War with Mexico, the Civil War, and the War with Spain. It was, in principle, followed as to the Revolutionary War. All who served during these wars were volunteers. The law worked well and is still working well with them. Those who must serve in the present great war are not volunteers. They are drafted. Is it fair or just that they be now denied the same generous and specific rates of pensions, under a plain and simple law, which can be easily understood by everyone, that covered the service of those who served in the preceding wars? I do not think so. I do not believe the present general law should be either annulled or amended. If you will give this law careful study and contrast it with the involved and very obscure provisions as to pensions of the bill you are now considering, I feel sure you will agree with me in this conclusion. In order that you may do this, I am attaching tables of rates under the general law.

I should, perhaps, make mention of one grave injustice the enactment of the pending bill would work, to wit: If a soldier or sailor is killed or his death is shown clearly due to the service, under the pending law, his widow would receive a pension of not less than $30 a month (see p. 17, lines 15, 16). There are many widows now pensioned at $12 per month whose husbands' deaths

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