Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1899 — STATE LAW MAKERS. [ARTICLE]

STATE LAW MAKERS.

The Senate on Thursday passed the bill granting the widow of Oliver P. Morton SIOO a month pension during her lifetime. She is now 76 years old and is in destitute circumstances. The people of Newton County, who would like to have the county seat removed from Kentland to Morocco, lost in the House in the first skirmish over the relocation bill. The majority report of the Judiciary Committee, recommending that it take 05 per cent of the vote of the county to order a removal, was adopted. The House passed several Senate bills, among them Senator Osborne's bill to limit the issue of bonds by county commissioners for gravel and macadamized roads. The lower house passed twenty-one bilA on Friday. Among the more important of them were bills to establish a State board of pharmacy, to require steam boilers to be inspected, to require the examination and licensing of stationary engineers. to establish county boards of charities, to prevent the importation into the State of dependent children, to prevent the adulteration of candy, to bestow the veto power on mayors of all cities of not less than 35,000 population and to require that all street ears be heated during winter months. After a prolonged debate the bill to authorize the State to pay a bounty on beet sugar was defeated, it has been defeated in both houses. In the Senate the bill by Mr. Hogate to provide for revision of the State constitution was advanced to engrossment. The committee on rivers and wate.-s of the lower house of the Legislature decided on Monday to report favorably on the bill for an act to assist in the building of a harbor at Wolf Lake. The bill provides for the condemnation of a right of way for a channel 300 feet wide, connecting Wolf Lake with Lake Michigan, and authorizes the assessment of benefits and damages for the building of the channel. The harbor improvement company which brought the bill to the Legislature says Congress will make an appropriation for the improvement of the harbor as soon as the channel is opened. The supporters of the proposition to reduce railroad fare to 2 cents a mile were defeated in the House on Monday by the tabling of a motion to require the committee on railroads to report the 2-eeut-fare bill.