sm. The veterans of the Civil War, who were
in early manhood in 1865, were now in middle life, were possessed of
political influence, and turned to the National Government for personal
advantage. Advocates of protection acted upon the theory that for
national purposes special advantages ought to be given to manufacturers.
The same idea of government readily bestowed these advantages in return
for a past service.

The machinery of the veterans was the Grand Army of the Republic, which,
from being an unimportant, reminiscent league, had grown to be an
instrument for the procuring of pensions. The surplus tempted citizens
to make demands upon it; the number of soldier votes encouraged
politicians to comply with the demands. In 1879 the movement began with
an Arrears of Pensions Act, by which pensioners were entitled to back
pay from their mustering-out dates, regardless of the period at which
their incapacity set in. The next step involved the issuing of pensions
for incapacity and dependence, regardless of their cause, and opened the
way for pensions for service only. In 1887 Cleveland vetoed a pension
bill of this character, and prevented its passage until the term of his
successor, in 1890. He had already offended many of his supporters by
guarding the offices; his pension veto offended more by checking the
attack of the old soldiers on the Treasury. No one opposed the granting
of pensions to soldiers who had been injured in the Civil War, but the
demands of the leaders of the Grand Army, supported by the interests of
hundreds of attorneys who lived on pension claims, now assumed the
appearance of an organized raid on the Treasury. The general laws were
supplemented by special private pension laws, of which 1871 were sent to
Cleveland in four years. He vetoed 228 of these, often to his political
injury. In many cases these made allowances to persons whose claims had
been rejected by the Pension Bureau as inadequate or fraudulent. In the
course of time Cleveland became "thoroughly tired of disapproving gifts
of public money to individuals who in my view have no right or claim to
the same." The pension fund, he maintained, was "the soldiers' fund,"
and should be distributed so as to "exclude perversion as well as to
insure a liberal and generous application of grateful and benevolent
designs." In the ten years ending in 1889, Congress spent $644,000,000
on pensions; in the next ten it spent $1,350,000,000.

The surplus i