People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1896 — INALIENABLE RIGHT IDENTIFIED. [ARTICLE]

INALIENABLE RIGHT IDENTIFIED.

It Is “Free laud,” In the Opinion of the Next Washington Governor. Tacoma, Wash., Dec. 15.—Governorelect Rogers has Issued a copyrighted pamphlet containing about 2,200 words and entitled “Free Land." A copy has been sent to tha members of the legislature which meets next month. He takes the position that free land is "Inalienable, Iraprescrlptable, and Indestructible" right of marv and draws lessons from the freedom and enjoyment of the Puyallup reservation Indians, which he thinks result from their free, inalienable, and untaxable homesteads. His position is by quotations from Emerson, Ingersolf sea 1 Seneca. In conclusion he proposes an amendment to the state legislature providing that real estate and all usual Improvements, to a value of not to exceed $2,tOQ, oeoupled as a homestead by any , private family, the head of which is a Citizen of the United States and this state, shall be forever exempted from all taxation of every kind. The exemption is limited to homesteads. The pamphlet states that the amount excepted by this scheme would not exceed 10 per cent, of the entire valuation. He said such a plan enacted into law “will prevent that fatal clash of the classes otherwise inevitable." The pamphlet concludes: “County government should be abolished or reduced to the merest skeleton of what it now Is. Townships and municipal governments can attend to local affairs; let the state be called In where necessary.”