You have to consider several things to appreciate what's going on here. In a typical county, well over a hundred veterans or widows could be on state support. Multiply $75 by the total of those on state pension support, then multiply that amount by twelve. Now we're talking about seven to eight million dollars.

In those days, that's a lot of money out of a state budget. Consider also that Southern states were taxed to pay pensions awarded to Federal veterans, and there's not much left to pay the salaries of state elected or appointed officials.

That leads to another point. States and counties didn't have sufficient administrative support to issue monthly checks. It was much easier to issue annual checks to a county officer and let him issue them. Attempting to do this on a monthly basis would have overwhelmed the small administrative staffs of Southern state governments, to say nothing of the counties.

Finally, wages fell sharply following the Civil War. In 1860 an unskilled farm laborer could be paid $1.25 a day without room and board, or $1.00 a day with room and board. After the war workers (including children) in cotton mills received far, far less and worked longer hours year round.

Dividing $75.00 by 365 days, we arrive at something approaching a quarter a day. That's several times what a typical child might get for dawn-to-dark work in a mine or cotton mill just over a century ago.

Pension support wasn't designed to make a veteran or widow wealthy -- just to keep them from begging along the roads. Some states may have added burial expenses, as well.