I am not unaware that the pension roll already involves a very large annual expenditure; neither am I deterred by that fact from recommending that Congress grant a pension to such honorably discharged soldiers and sailors of the Civil War as, having rendered substantial service during the war, are now dependent upon their own labor for a maintenance and by disease or casualty are incapacitated from earning it.  Many of the men who would be included in this form of relief are now dependent upon public aid, and it does not, in my judgment, consist with the national honor that they shall continue to subsist upon the local relief given indiscriminately to paupers instead of upon the special and generous provision of the nation they served so gallantly and unselfishly.  Our people will, I am sure, very generally approve such legislation.  And I am equally sure that the survivors of the Union Army and Navy will feel a grateful sense of relief when this worthy and suffering class of their comrades is fairly cared for.

There are some manifest inequalities in the existing law that should be remedied.  To some of these the Secretary of the Interior has called attention.

It is gratifying to be able to state that by the adoption of new and better methods in the War Department the calls of the Pension Office for information as to the military and hospital records of pension claimants are now promptly answered and the injurious and vexatious delays that have heretofore occurred are entirely avoided.  This will greatly facilitate the adjustment of all pending claims.

The advent of four new States—­South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington—­into the Union under the Constitution in the same month, and the admission of their duly chosen representatives to our National Congress at the same session, is an event as unexampled as it is interesting.

The certification of the votes cast and of the constitutions adopted in each of the States was filed with me, as required by the eighth section of the act of February 22, 1889, by the governors of said Territories, respectively.  Having after a careful examination found that the several constitutions and governments were republican in form and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, that all the provisions of the act of Congress had been complied with, and that a majority of the votes cast in each of said proposed States was in favor of the adoption of the constitution submitted therein, I did so declare by a separate proclamation as to each—­as to North Dakota and South Dakota on Saturday, November 2; as to Montana on Friday, November 8, and as to Washington on Monday, November 11.

Each of these States has within it resources the development of which will employ the energies of and yield a comfortable subsistence to a great population.  The smallest of these new States, Washington, stands twelfth, and the largest, Montana, third, among the forty-two in area.  The people of these States are already well-trained, intelligent, and patriotic American citizens, having common interests and sympathies with those of the older States and a common purpose to defend the integrity and uphold the honor of the nation.