devised, and, when completed and in operation, will facilitate greatly the labors of the office.
It appears evident that the present force of the Pension Office is not adequate for the prompt disposition of the business before it, and I therefore concur in the Commissioner’s recommendation for an additional appropriation of $50,000, to be immediately available for the current year. The Commissioner suggests that the clerical force of the offices of the Adjutant-General and Surgeon-General is not sufficient to enable them to respond with promptness to the large number of callls made upon them.
The Commissioner again calls attention to the present defective system of setting claims, and renews his recommendation that the plan hitherto presented by him be adopted. In this connection he says:
“Besides being cumbersome and expensive, the present system is an open door to the Treasury for the perpetration of fraud. The affidavits in support of the claims have the same appearance to the officers of the bureau whether false or true. The rules which are established in relation to the production of evidence in attempting to exclude the frauds often work a hardship upon the honest claimant. He finds himself, through the death or imperfect recollection of witnesses or for some other cause, unable to comply with them, is often defeated, while the fraudulent claimant, who will manufacture the necessary testimony to meet them, succeeds in his claim. * * * On the other hand, the change proposed will possess the following advantages over the present system:
1. The testimony and proceedings to establish the pension claims will be public and of a reliable character. This will facilitate prompt, more just, and more liberal decisions, and protect the Treasury from frauds, while the claimant’s expenses will not be increased, but rather diminished.
2. The medical examinations being made by unprejudiced government officials, whose sworn duty it will be to find out and report the exact truth, both the claimants and the government will be relieved from the now too common danger of being made the victims of the ignorance, prejudice, or carelessness of a neighborhood examining surgeon.
3. The special investigation of cases by the special agents will be dispensed with as no longer necessary for the detection of fraud. The publicity of the proceedings in the neighborhood where the claimants reside will operate to restrain the presentation of unmeritorious and fraudulent claims, and furnish ample protection to the government against the successful prosecution of any such which may be presented.
But the great point, and the one to which every other consideration should yield, is that the new system, through its public proceedings among the claimant’s neighbors, will obtain the truth in the cases in such reliable form that prompt justice will be done to the deserving.”
The magnitude of the interests involved commends this system to the considerate attention of Congress. It is evident that the present system, based upon ex-parte testimony, exposes the government to fraud, and makes its detection very difficult. I therefore concur in the opinion expressed by the Commissioner that a change is essential for the better protection of the government in the payment of pensions.
The Commissioner reports the satisfactory condition of the pension agencies and calls attention to what he deems the inadequate compensation of the agents. In the passage of the act fixing their pay, many
