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| CIVIL WAR PENSIONS gggff |
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| By far the largest and most enduring precedent in the GAPE for later developments in social insurance was the Civil War pension program deployed for Union soldiers and their dependents following the Civil War. In 1894, this program accounted for 37% of the entire federal government budget. Such a large federal expenditure could not help but engender some criticism. The process of awarding pensions, which was administered locally, was amenable to political patronage and other forms of corruption. Also, a robust legal specialty sprung up of lawyers who specialized in helping would-be recipients secure potential pensions. Over time, these developments led to skepticism about the program and to concerns that it was rife with fraud, waste and abuse. [See cartoon & editorials from Puck magazine from the period.] Whether these concerns were valid, is hard to say. One recognized authority on this period, Professor Theda Skocpol, has studied the question and has concluded: "After poring over Annual Reports of Commissioners of Pensions to find any possible systematic statistics, I have reluctantly concluded that nothing exact can be said about the proportions of illegitimate pensioners or expenditures. We can only speculate that some (undetermined) thousands, or conceivably tens of thousands, of the nearly one million pensioners in 1910 were bogus. Perhaps aided by dishonest pension attorneys, these men and women had exploited the loose and locally rooted application system to obtain fraudulent pensions or--in most cases, I suspect--overly generous benefits." [1] [1] Skocpol, (See "Suggestions for Additional Reading" below) 145. |
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The U.S. Pension Building in Washington, D.C., circa 1900. Author's collection. |
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