I herewith return without approval House bill No. 4797, entitled “An act granting a pension to Robert H. Stapleton.”

This claimant filed an application for pension in the Pension Bureau in 1883, alleging that while acting as lieutenant-colonel of a New Mexico regiment, on February 21, 1862, the tongue of a caisson struck him, injuring his left side.  A medical examination made in 1882 showed a fracture of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh ribs of the left side.

If these fractures were the result of the injury alleged, they were immediately apparent, and the delay of twenty-one years in presenting the claim for pension certainly needs explanation.

Claims of this description, by a wise provision of law, must, to be valid, be prosecuted to a successful issue prior to the 4th day of July, 1874.

The rank which this claimant held presupposes such intelligence as admits of no excuse on the ground of ignorance of the law for his failure to present his application within the time fixed by law.

The evidence of disability from the cause alleged is weak, to say the most of it, and I can not think that such a wholesome provision of law as that above referred to, which limits the time for the adjustment of such claims, should be modified upon the facts presented in this case.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 6, 1886.

To the House of Representatives: 

I herewith return without approval House bill No. 5550, entitled “An act to provide for the erection of a public building at Duluth, Minn.”

After quite a careful examination of the public needs at the point mentioned I am entirely satisfied that the public building provided for in this bill is not immediately necessary.

Not a little legislation has lately been perfected, and very likely more will be necessary, to increase miscalculated appropriations for and correct blunders in the construction of many of the public buildings now in process of erection.

While this does not furnish a good reason for disapproving the erection of other buildings where actually necessary, it induces close scrutiny and gives rise to the earnest wish that new projects for public buildings shall for the present be limited to such as are required by the most pressing necessities of the Government’s business.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 6, 1886.

To the House of Representatives: 

I return herewith without approval House bill No. 2043, entitled “An act to place Mary Karstetter on the pension roll.”

The husband of this beneficiary, Jacob Karstetter, was enrolled June 30, 1864, as a substitute in a Pennsylvania regiment, and was discharged for disability June 20, 1865, caused by a gunshot wound in the left hand.

A declaration for pension was filed by him in 1865, based upon this wound, and the same was granted, dating from June in that year, which he drew till the time of his death, August 21, 1874.