Senator Hanna's Pension Bill

SENATOR HANNA’S PENSION BILL.

Senator Hanna's bill for the pensioning of ex-slaves is the biggest fool measure that has been noticed in this or any other congress. It provides that ex-slaves, male or female, over 50 years of age and under 60, shall receive a cash bounty of $100 and a monthly pension of $8; those between 60 and 70, a bounty of $300 and a pension of $12 a month; persons over 70, a bounty of $500 and a pension of $18 a mouth. The bill also provides a pension for relatives of ex-slaves who have to care for the said ex-slaves. The measure, if enacted into law, would probably add $350,000,000 to the pension list and bankrupt the nation. Of course Senator Hanna does not expect the measure to become law and he has been badgered about the fool thing until he has been forced to come out and say that it is not his bill and he is not for it, and that he simply introduced it by request. There are those, however, unkind enough to suggest that the thing is a scheme to bring southern delegates to Hanna's standard for the presidential nomination in 1904.

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The fact that the trusts, especially the Standard Oil trust, are opposed to the publicity clause of the pending trust legislation is indicative of the earnest need of such legislation. This government is one of public opinion. Public opinion when expressed in due form is the supreme authority in the nation. The public is entitled to know the facts in all matters which concern the public weal. Our citizenship is intelligent beyond the citizenship of any other nation possibly, and it ought to be and is an entirely safe tribunal to trust any and all matter to which concerns the good of all. All those things which enter into industrial crises should be placed before the public, therefore, that the public by lawful means may put in force the necessary preventive. The very fact of a publicity requirement would in large measure destroy or prevent those acts which, performed in secret, lead to industrial crises. The American citizen means to be and is fair and reasonable in his judgments. He is educated to see the results of bad policies and disposed to correct such tendencies. The great corporations are chartered by the state and consequently the state is a partner to their business and has a right to know whether that business is being conducted on proper business principles, principles that are not injurious to the public. Publicity as to the true status of all such organizations has nothing of impertinence or meddling in it therefore. It is but what is due to the public. And this is the only way the public can secure the information it is entitled to and the consideration which is its due.