Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1899 — STATE LAW MAKERS. [ARTICLE]

STATE LAW MAKERS.

The commission, composed of one Senator and two Representatives, which, acting under a law passed by the last Legislature, visited all tbo State’s penal, benevolent and reformatory institutions just before the beginning of this session, submitted its report to the Legislature on Thnrsday. The commission takes the place of the junketing committees that have hitherto visited the Institutions. The report, which will be the guide of the Ways and Means Committee, will give the State reformatory 300 additional cells, will provide for 300 additional inmates in the home for feeble-minded youth, will provide for 200 additional inmates in the central hospital for the insane, 118 in the eastern hospital for the insane, 100 in the northern hospital for the insane and 132 in the southern hospital for the insane. The commission reeommends that a hospital for the criminal insane be built. In the House the bill to take the appointment of metropolitan police commissioners out of the hands of the Governor in all cities l>etween 7,000 and 30,000 was defeated. The House passed the bill establishing the conTict labor system in the State prison. Each branch has now passed its own bill on the subject. The bill under which the State authorities had hoped to prevent lynchings by making the county in which lynchings occurred liable for a penalty of $5,000 was indefinitely postponed in the House Friday afternoon by a vote of 35 to 60. The House took the view that it would not be right to make innocent taxpayers suffer for the acts of mobs. In the Senate the yowl wine bill for the reorganization oj-rine State Board of Education was substituted for the Holgate bill. The substitution was a triumph for the Stnte college faction.

The House alone held a session Saturday morning. The only important business transacted was the killing of a bill for a large executive mansion for the Governor in Indianapolis. The bill introduced by Senator Shea and intended to regulate and tax express companies was deprived of its main feature on Tuesday when the Senate struck out the section providing for a tax of 2 cents on all packages and consignments received for transportation in this State. A bill giving to the voters of an incorporated town the right to demand a referendum in the acts of the board of trustees was passed to engrossment. Senator Gwin of New Albany, Democrat, introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of the Indiana reformatory at Jeffersonville. The resolution was referred to the Committee on Benevolent Institutions. The House, under a suspension of the rule requiring a bill to be read on three several days, passed a bill dividing the institution known as the “Reform School for Girls and Woman’s Prison.” Two new institutions are created by the bill—“ The Indiana Industrial School for Girls” and “The Woman’s Prison.”

The Senate on Wednesday passed the bill prepared by the Senate epmmission providing for a uniform system of bookkeeping by the several counties and authorizing the Auditor of Stnte to make an examination of county affairs regularly. By just enough votes to pass the bill the house advanced to engrossment a bill under whieh it is hoped to bring out of hiding a good deal of property for taxation. The bill, by Mr. Herrold, as presented, •provides that cn the Ist of April each year, or as soon thereafter as possible, the Assessor in each township shall stamp all promissory notes, and that interest on any unstamped note shall not be collectable, The House amended the bill so as to include “all bonds, certificates of stock and other written obligations.”