Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1909 — GOUGE BILLS GET THE AXE [ARTICLE]

GOUGE BILLS GET THE AXE

House Majority Watching Peoples’ Interests. KEEPING PARTY PLEDGES Campaign Promises Looking to Reign of Economy In the Administering of State Affairs Being Fulfilled by the House Majority, Whose Efforts In Behalf of the Taxpayer Are Ham> pered by the Republican Senate, Which Will Not Acknowledge Years of Wasteful Methods.

Indianapolis, Feb. 16. —In one respect, at least, the present session of the general assembly has broken the records established by most of its predecessors, and that is in the number of bills passed. Perhaps it would be better to say in the number of bills not passed, because up to the present time fewer measures have received the sanction of both houses and gone to the governor than at a similar period in any session for many years. Generally speaking, this does not indicate that the legislators have been slothful, nor that, in the main, they are not doing good work. After all is said, it is not quantity that counts. At the beginning of the session Governor Marshall suggested that the character of enactments was of more importance than the mere number, and that suggestion has had Influence. But it cannot be denied that some material matters could have been disposed of that have not been and that much time has beep frittered away on things that are entirely Inconsequential. This, however, is one of the things that has never yet been prevented and probably never will be. Each house has pushed forward some of its pet measures and sent them over to the other, and there most of them have stuck. As the Republicans control the senate, they are not inclined to hurry along any bill that the Democratic majority of the house is anxious to have passed. For illustration, there is the pure elections bill that the Democratic house passed weeks ago. It ought to have reached the governor for his approval long ago, but instead it is still pigeon-holded in the senate. And so with other measures. It will readily be seen that a divided legislature has its drawbacks. * 4

More than two weeks ago the Democrats in the house adopted a concurrent resoluticn providing for a committee composed of two representatives and two senators to investigate the state offices and report as to their condition and as to what would be necessary "to put the state’s affairs on a business basis.’’ When the senate committee to which this resolution was referred brought it out the other day the Republican members “amended” it by striking out that part relating to putting "the state’s affairs on a business basis.” This was done over the protest of the Democratic members. Senator Kistler, speaking for the Democrats, declared that the Republicans were undertaking to strike out the purpose fcr which the resolution was intended. “Placing the state’s affairs on a business basis is exactly what we want,” he said. “There is no reason to strike out that portion of the resolution. Is it tramping on the toes of someone to ask that the state’s affairs be placed on a business basis? Do you gentlemen on the other side of the house want to be understood to be in favor of the state’s affairs not being on a business basis?” But the protest did not avail. The Republicans contended that the state’s affairs were already on a business basis.” There Is no likelihood that the investigating committee, with its two Democrats and two Republicaris, will do anything else than submit a divided report. It is very evident that the Republicans in the legislature are not going to admit that they have been extravagant and wasteful, even in the face of overwhelming

proof to the contrary. • To save themselves from utter condemnation they may concede some slight reductions in the appropriations to be made for the state offices, but they will do it grudgingly. It will be merely something to point to in the next campaign. • • • During the earlier days of the session it seemed that the Republican politicians in the senate were proceeding on the theory that the Democratic members in both houses were a lot of easy marks who would stand for any plausible gouge that was presented. Moth-eaten schemes, decrepit claims and other legislative flotsam and jetsam were dusted and brushed and gingered up and then brought out to attract the Democratic eye. For a time it appeared that a few of the Demo crats were going to be caught in this trap. Some of them went so far as to nibble innocently at the bait despite the almost frantic endeavors of party leaders within and without the legislature to arouse them to the danger. But such as these have been jarred awake. During the last laps of the session there will be some tall sailing toward a safe political anchorage. All gouge and graft bills are being hunted down and killed. No appropriations will be made except for strictly necessary purposes. Salaries are to be cut and needless offices abolished. All

moth-eaten claims will be tossed into the ash barrel. Every project for scraping the bottom of the treasury for its last few dimes will be hit with a maul on the point of its jaw. Even the Muncie normal school, with its buildings and grounds, which was put forward as a “nice little gift”-to the state, will be i? turned down. It has been turned down so often that it is used to it, but at first blush it looked good to some of the legislators who had never heard of it before, and they gave it a friendly pat on the back. With a fuller knowledge of the proposition these same men stand ready to swat it on its solar plexus. As a matter of fact that nice little gift carried with it, as the bjll provides, a special tax levy of about 1130,000 a year and the certainty of numerous special appropriations besides. The measure is opposed on the ground that the state is not in a financial condition to indulge in this luxury ai this time. No one has anything against Muncie, and in time another state normal school may be a good thing, but the taxpayers have rights which even legislators are bound to respect. The Democratic members have mapped cut a definite line of action which they will follow to the end of the session. Party pledges are to be redeemed as far as it lies in their power. Some mistakes have been made through misunderstandings, but nothing of the kind will be done again if'the leaders can prevent it. The Democrats, whatever else may be said, have not attempted to play any petty politics.

The present session of the legislature has been prolific of proposals of different sorts relating to the public schools. In the first place, a bill with a common origin was introduced by a leading Republican in the senates and by a leading Democrat in the house. It appeared in both houses early in the session, and its object is to do away with the uniformity of schoolboAks by taking the adoption of the standard away from the state board of education and turning it over to a board of adoption in each county to be composed of five educators of the county. This bill is opposed by Pro. Robert J. Aley, the newly elected superintendent of public Instruction. It Is also opposed by many others. But it is said that it is favored by forty or fifty lobbyists of the school book trust. At all events, there are forty or fifty agents of school book concerns here on the ground, and some of them have been here since the legislature opened. They are not paying hotel bills for the mere pleasure of listening to the legislative debates cn “rat tail” bounty bills and similar ingenuous proposals. One of these able agents told me that under the present system the people are “getting the worst of it.” It seems probable, therefore, that the schoolbook trust has sent its represen-

tatlves here to Indianapolis to lobby In the interest of the people. That is a way trusts have. As a matter of fact, the people are “getting the worst of It” under the present “system,” but It is because that system has been beaten and hammered until it is no system, but only a skeleton of a system, neatly wired and articulated, but scant on real ’flesh. Through, its polished bones the parents of the state who have children In the schools see the costly supplementary things, the books and supplies, the odds and ends. In the price and change of which the present law gives no protection. Few persons believe, however, that any good can be accomplished by going back to the old method of local adoption. That was a glorious period for the schoolbook and supply combination, and the smell of it has not yet been forgotten. Aside from the schoolbook bill, there are several other measures pending which affect the public schools. An effort is being made to reopen the local schoolhouses closed by the consolidation act passed two years ago, and to limit the distance that children may be hauled to school in township wagons. And then there is a bill to secure the sanitation of school buildings and premises. There has been much discussion of these various measures and many references to the "eld log schoolhouse,” with its slab benches, the "little red schoolhouse” at,the end of the lane, “moss-covered buckets” and gourd dippers, “bubbling springs on the hillside,” “babbling brooks” and bare-legged children and other fond recollections of long-gone childhood. It was the old cry for the touch of a

vanished hand, for the sound of a voice that is still, for the tender grace of a day that is dead and lost in the sweep of new things and changed conditions. We will never get back. Dr. Hurty is here with his microbes as big as battleships and twice as dangerous. And they will get us if we don’t watch out So runs the world away, good brothers and sisters, and it’s no use to kick. On the theory that public business could be better managed and much money saved by a uniform system of public accounts, a few simple-minded persons got up a bill along that line and had it introduced in the legislature. Under this bill as prepared the governor of the state would appoint the chief executive officer of the new system and otherwise be something more than a bump on a log. But the Republicans of the senate have amended the bill so M to partisanize it by placing the establishing of the scheme in the hands of a board composed of the secretary and auditor of state and i the governor. The secretary and audi-! tor are Republicans and under the Re-' publican plan they would run things to suit themselves and their party. Of course the Democrats will not agree to this change in the bill and the whole thing will peter out unless the Republicans recede from their position. MILLARD F. COX.