Fifty Thousand Dollars More for School

New York, 1895

(Correspondence of THE FARMER.)

ALBANY, March 21.

Senator Childs has had distinguished success with his bill to appropriate $50,000 more for the normal school in Jamaica. The Senate finance committee has reported the bill unanimously, and of its passage there is no doubt. This makes the total appropriation $150,000. It is a special mark of distinction in Senator Childs' favor that both appropriations have been obtained since he became Long Island's representative. It has been no easy matter, for there is a prejudice against granting any more appropriations for normal schools.

Assemblyman Vacheron seems to be bound to kill the tax arrears commission bill unless he is permitted to increase the number of commissioners to five any way, and possibly six. All along he has been denouncing the bill as a job to provide places for politicians, which is, of course, nonsense. The Assemblyman is the only man who has sought to make the bill a job for patronage, and to increase the expense beyond a reasonable limit, which any addition to the number of commissioners would do. Mr. Childs had no trouble to pass the bill through the Senate because the members of the judiciary committee saw the importance of the measure is related to the state of affairs in Queens County, and the bill would not meet with opposition in the Assembly but for Mr. Vacheron, whose only desire is to find places in the commission for some of his friends, no matter at what cost.

Senator Childs says he does not see how he can yield to Mr. Vacheron's demands and be fair with his constituents. The Senator certainly could find no justification for permitting Mr. Vacheron to increase the expenses of the commission thousands of dollars. Rather than impose such a wrong on the tax-payers, it is probable that Mr. Childs would permit the bill to perish.

The bill introduced by Mr. Vacheron, providing that no excise commissioner shall be interested in the sale of liquor or cigars, has passed.

Senator Lexow has introduced a bill providing that vagrants and tramps shall be committed to prison for six months at hard labor.

Assemblyman Vacheron's local option bill provides that when the people of a town, or of an incorporated village, vote in favor of local prohibition, no liquor shall be sold or licenses granted until the people shall reverse prohibition by a vote.

The Governor has signed the bill authorizing the village of Greenport to purchase the plant of the local water company.

The Governor has signed the bill authorizing the town officers of Flushing to appropriate money for the support of the village hospital.

The Raines-Kern excise bill, which is approved by Boss Platt and is likely to be enacted by his legislature, is in its most essential feature a rehash of the Vedder tax bill which was vetoed by Governor Hill several years ago on account of the injustice it would work to various cities of the state. The Raines-Kern bill provides that half of the revenues derived from the liquor taxes which it proposes to substitute for the present license system shall go to the counties and half be turned over to the state. Of course, the iniquity of such a plan is manifest upon its face.

Localities which countenance the sale of liquor would, under the proposed law, instead of having all the revenues derived from the traffic to apply to the support of their charities and prisons be compelled to pay over fifty per cent. of the amount to the State to be applied directly or indirectly to the benefit of counties which do not allow the sale of liquor and would give no compensating revenues in return therefor. Besides this obviously unjust feature, the bill has other very bad ones.

In cities of the first class (New York and Brooklyn) those who desire to sell liquor must pay a tax of $500 per year. In second-class cities (Albany, Troy, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo) the liquor dealer must pay $350 tax. In third class cities the tax is $250, and in towns $150. It is a very bad feature, however, that the enforcement of the law is left entirely to the local police of the several cities and towns, boards of excise being abolished. The practical result of this would be (if indeed it is not intended to be) that the police would be a connecting link between the political bosses and the saloons.

The proposed bill dodges the problem of Sunday opening, which is so fraught with peril to the Republican politicians, by leaving it to local option. Rural communities which believe in the Democratic theory of proper restrictions to the traffic and of local use in the local treasury of liquor revenues, and who know what a farce local option has proved in practice, may judge for themselves the true character of this Platt excise bill.

The Assembly passed the woman suffrage concurrent resolution. The resolution now goes to the Senate, and, in case it is passed there, it must come up again before next year's Legislature, and pass both branches thereof before the proposed constitutional amendment which it embodies, conferring upon women the right of suffrage, can be submitted to the people.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 22, 1895, p. 1.