Pension legislation was even more successful as a method of reducing the unwieldy surplus. Garfield had declared in 1872, when introducing an appropriation bill in the House of Representatives, "We may reasonably expect that the expenditures for pensions will hereafter steadily decrease, unless our legislation should be unwarrantably extravagant," and in fact the cost of pensions for 1878 had been lower by more than $7,000,000 than in 1871. The Arrears act of 1879 had given a decided upward tendency to pension expense, which amounted to over $20,000,000 more in 1880 than in 1879. The surplus was a constant invitation to careless generosity. Liberality to the veteran was a patriotic duty which lent itself to the fervid stump oratory of the time and presented an opportunity to the undeserving applicant to place his name on the rolls of pensioners along with his more worthy associates. Besides, an administration which seemed niggardly in its attitude toward the veterans was certain to lose the soldier vote, and neither party was willing to incur such a risk. Hence, despite Cleveland's vetoes of private pension legislation, hundreds of such measures passed during his first term. The Harrison administration proceeded upon the President's theory that it "was no time to be weighing the claims of old soldiers with apothecary's scales." A dependent pension bill like that which President Cleveland vetoed in 1887 was passed in 1890. The list of pensioners more than doubled in length; the number of applications for aid increased tenfold in two years. It became necessary for President Harrison to displace his over-liberal commissioner of pensions, but the mischief was already done. The total yearly pension expenditure quickly mounted beyond the one hundred million mark, where it has remained ever since. Indeed, the cost of pensions in 1872 when Garfield made his prophecy was less than one-sixth as great as in 1913. Large pension expenditure was clearly a permanent charge.