er them unable to
earn a support."

It will be observed that there is no limitation or definition of the
incapacitating injury or ailment itself. It need only be such a degree
of disability from any cause as renders the claimant unable to earn a
support by labor. It seems to me that the "support" here mentioned as
one which can not be earned is a complete and entire support, with no
diminution on account of the least impairment of physical or mental
condition. If it had been intended to embrace only those who by disease
or injury were totally unable to labor, it would have been very easy to
express that idea, instead of recognizing, as is done, a "degree" of
such inability.

What is a support? Who is to determine whether a man earns it, or has
it, or has it not? Is the Government to enter the homes of claimants for
pension and after an examination of their surroundings and circumstances
settle those questions? Shall the Government say to one man that his
manner of subsistence by his earnings is a support and to another that
the things his earnings furnish are not a support? Any attempt, however
honest, to administer this law in such a manner would necessarily
produce more unfairness and unjust discrimination and give more scope
for partisan partiality, and would result in more perversion of the
Government's benevolent intentions, than the execution of any statute
ought to permit.

If in the effort to carry out the proposed law the degree of disability
as related to earnings be considered for the purpose of discovering if
in any way it curtails the support which the applicant, if entirely
sound, would earn, and to which he is entitled, we enter the broad field
long occupied by the Pension Bureau, and we recognize as the only
difference between the proposed legislation and previous laws passed for
the benefit of the surviving soldiers of the Civil War the incurrence in
one case of disabilities in military service and in the other
disabilities existing, but in no way connected with or resulting from
such service.

It must be borne in mind that in no case is there any grading of this
proposed pension. Under the operation of the rule first suggested, if
there is a lack in any degree, great or small, of the ability to earn
such a support as the Government determines the claimant should have,
and, by the application of the rule secondly suggested, if there is a
reduction in any degree of the support which he might earn if