WAUPACA POST

June 28, 1894 ?

 

“WELL DONE, THOU GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANTS”

 

            The report of the committee which recently investigated the Wisconsin Veterans’ Home at this city, and which is published in full elsewhere in this paper, has brought to the attention of the public a state of affairs which has no parallel in the history of pubic institutions in Wisconsin.  It is a state of affairs which has been permitted to exist for several years after the attention of the board of trustees of the Home had it forcibly brought to their notice, but which, feeling secure in their hold upon the Grand Army of the republic, they refused to even investigate, much less right the wrongs.  Whenever criticism has been made either as to the internal management of the Home, or the financial policy of the board and its satellites, they have drawn the cloak of the Grand Army around the matter, making the public assertion that an accusation against the Home was an attack upon the old soldiers, and, to quote Secretary Woodnorth, “every man who fought under that dear old starry banner”.  “The Grand Army is running this Home” has been the cry, and the state of Wisconsin, which pays the bills, was told to keep its hands off.  Under these circumstances the report just made is of much greater weight than as if it came from any state board or committee appointed by the governor or, legislature.  It is the result of a fair, open, impartial investigation by three prominent Grand Army men, and is their unanimous conviction as to the condition of the affairs of the Home.  The report upholds every criticism of the Home and its board of trustees that the POST or anyone else has ever made, and its statement of matters generally thoroughly coincides with what nine-tenths of the people in Waupaca and vicinity have believed for years.  In fact, with the exception of those who have been in the ring which has been rowing rich out of the Home at the state’s expense, the people of Waupaca thoroughly endorse the findings of the committee, and say, with the POST, “Well don, thou good and faithful servants.”

            The position in which the board of trustees is left, and particularly those members who have been selling the Home supplies, and then auditing their own bills, is such that there seems to be but one thing for them to do, and that is, to resign, and let disinterested men take their places.  That they have been shamefully negligent of their duties is putting it mildly – the committee hints that those who sold the Home goods are liable to prosecution under the general statues of the state.  Let them step down and out, acknowledging their inability to properly manage an institution of the magnitude of the Home, and they will be respected for their action; it is the only atonement they can make at this time.  But, if reports are true, the members of the board met at Milwaukee on Saturday, with closed doors, and Trustee Smith was instructed to draft new rules, and that was all that was done.  Some of the members speak of the report as “absurd”, “unwarranted”, “false”, and “one-sided”.  Secretary Woodnorth – who has been the most blatant in his assertions that he was doing all the work of the secretary’s office purely for the love of the old soldier, and who was posed as a patriot, spending much time and more money for the benefit of the Home, without pay, though meanwhile he and his partner had sold the Home drugs to the extent of over $6,800 at prices which the public has never been able to learn – has been particularly bitter in his denunciations of the committee and its report.  It ill becomes him to fight the truth telling story.  A purely “professional” soldier, posing as a “colonel” when the records show he was mustered out as a private after a year and a half service, several months of which were spent in the hospital, who “cast his bread upon the waters” that it might return to him in golden ducats through selling the Home drugs, he had much better keep still and, if he insists upon retaining his position as secretary of the board, seek to make the changes the report suggests, than to cry in his rage and self-glorification that the report will be ignored, and the superintendent and matrons retained in their positions despite the recommendations of the committee.  The Grand Army of the Republic, now that it has been awakened to the true state of affairs at the Home, will make short work of “Col. Joe” and his few remaining friends in case they insist upon pushing themselves forward in the future as in the past.

            One thing is certain.  As the POST said while the committee was in session here before any intimation was given out as to the verdict, nothing but good can come out of the investigation. We do not believe that Dept. Com. Watrous and the council of administration of the G.A.R. will ignore the report, even if the board of trustees does, as its members claim they will.  Its findings are too severe, its strictures upon the management are too binding, its recommendations are too sensible, and above all, the evidence upon which the report is based, is too convincing, to allow it to be laid upon the table, unnoticed. And if, by any mischance, the Grand Army should lie dormant and let the present abuses at the Home continue, then the people of the State of Wisconsin, who pay the bills for the maintenance of the Home, should rise in their might, and say “We will manage this institution, if you cannot, and made it a Home in all that the name implies; we will make it a Home which will honor our state, and not disgrace it.”