s in
our own and distant markets.

I will suggest or mention another subject bearing upon the problem of
"how to enable the Secretary of the Treasury to accumulate balances."
It is to devise some better method of verifying claims against the
Government than at present exists through the Court of Claims,
especially those claims growing out of the late war. Nothing is more
certain than that a very large percentage of the amounts passed and
paid are either wholly fraudulent or are far in excess of the real
losses sustained. The large amount of losses proven--on good testimony
according to existing laws, by affidavits of fictitious or unscrupulous
persons--to have been sustained on small farms and plantations are not
only far beyond the possible yield of those places for any one year,
but, as everyone knows who has had experience in tilling the soil and
who has visited the scenes of these spoliations, are in many instances
more than the individual claimants were ever worth, including their
personal and real estate.

The report of the Attorney-General, which will be submitted to Congress
at an early day, will contain a detailed history of awards made and of
claims pending of the class here referred to.

The report of the Secretary of War, accompanying this message, gives a
detailed account of Army operations for the year just passed, expenses
for maintenance, etc., with recommendations for legislation to which I
respectfully invite your attention. To some of these I invite special
attention:

First. The necessity of making $300,000 of the appropriation for the
Subsistence Department available before the beginning of the next fiscal
year. Without this provision troops at points distant from supply
production must either go without food or existing laws must be
violated. It is not attended with cost to the Treasury.

Second. His recommendation for the enactment of a system of annuities
for the families of deceased officers by voluntary deductions from the
monthly pay of officers. This again is not attended with burden upon the
Treasury, and would for the future relieve much distress which every old
army officer has witnessed in the past--of officers dying suddenly or
being killed, leaving families without even the means of reaching their
friends, if fortunate enough to have friends to aid them.

Third. The repeal of the law abolishing mileage, and a return to the old
system.

Fourth. The trial with torpedoes under the