death and disability not chargeable to army service, was 459,155.

The number added to the rolls during the year was 123,634 and the number
dropped was 33,690. The first payments on pensions allowed during the
year amounted to $33,756,549.98. This includes arrears, or the
accumulation between the time from which the allowance of pension dates
and the time of actually granting the certificate.

Although the law of 1890 permits pensions for disabilities not related
to military service, yet as a requisite to its benefits a disability
must exist incapacitating applicants "from the performance of manual
labor to such a degree as to render them unable to earn a support." The
execution of this law in its early stages does not seem to have been in
accord with its true intention, but toward the close of the last
Administration an authoritative construction was given to the statute,
and since that time this construction has been followed. This has had
the effect of limiting the operation of the law to its intended purpose.
The discovery having been made that many names had been put upon the
pension roll by means of wholesale and gigantic frauds, the Commissioner
suspended payments upon a number of pensions which seemed to be
fraudulent or unauthorized pending a complete examination, giving notice
to the pensioners, in order that they might have an opportunity to
establish, if possible, the justice of their claims notwithstanding
apparent invalidity.

This, I understand, is the practice which has for a long time prevailed
in the Pension Bureau; but after entering upon these recent
investigations the Commissioner modified this rule so as not to allow
until after a complete examination interference with the payment of a
pension apparently not altogether void, but which merely had been fixed