THE WAUPACA POST

November 1, 1894

 

THE WAUPACA HOME.

 

            The following is from the pen of Col. J.A. Watrous, one of the trustees of the Home, and appeared in the Milwaukee Telegraph of last Sunday.

            “There is a well founded report that a move will be made within a year to transfer the management of the Wisconsin Veterans’ Home, of Waupaca, to the State Board of Control.  It is also reported, and on quite good authority, that some of the men who took a pronounced stand against such a transfer in 1891, will favor the move.  There may have been a time when such a change would have been warranted, but this is not such a time.  The Home is being managed in a more business-like way – more to the credit of the institution, and the societies which brought it into existence – the societies under which it is managed – the Grand Army and the Relief Corps – than at any time since it was first opened for the admission of members.  The practices which resulted in the complaints, scandals and investigation, have wholly disappeared.  Had they never appeared, or had they been abandoned within a year or two after the Home started – had there never been any selling of goods by trustees, or had the custom been short-lived, there is abundant reason for the belief, which generally obtains, that there would have been no such call as was made for an investigation – no scandals, no serious trouble.  The Home is indeed a Home, going on pleasantly, in a business way, well managed, under the new rules.  So long as that is true, so long as it is getting on better than ever before, we see no reason for taking it out of the hands of the Grand Army, and we trust that the move will be pigeon-holed.  There is one source of uneasiness at the Home for which there seems to be no good foundation.  We mean the objection that has grown out of the practice of retaining, by the Home, of all over $5 of the pension drawn by a single man whose wife is with him at the Home, and all over $8 drawn by a widow.  The last Department Encampment was unanimous in establishing that custom, and there is little reason to believe that it will recede.  In Massachusetts the State Home takes all of the pension and pays to the member $2 per month, the balance, no matter how large or small the pension, going to the Home fund – the fund for expenses.  The managers think that as the members are supplied with everything by the Home, a portion of the pension should be given to sustain that comfortable Home – that it is better so used than to be squandered.

            “In this connection we print a Waupaca letter of recent date as follows:

Special Correspondence Milwaukee Telegraph

            WAUPACA, Oct. 20 – The Soldiers’ Home discords have taken wings and flown since the adoption and enforcement of the new rules, which rules, among other things, have put a complete stop to the sale of goods to the Home by the trustees and other officers.  But there is a danger of a new crop of trouble at the Home.  It comes to your correspondent that at least one of the members of the Board of Trustees and some of the officers of the Home speak of the Red Tape of the new rules in a slighting, not to say sneering manner, and so that the members of the Home see and hear it or have heard of it.  This can only breed discontent among the members and lead some of them to show contempt for the new laws. – the same kind of contempt which the trustee and officers manifest when they say Red Tape, sneeringly.  I hope that this gentle hint will be sufficient to bring to a full stop all such conduct on the part of officers and others, for its continuance means another outbreak of trouble at the Home, sooner or later.”