The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1893-04-22
The New Legislatures Needs
BOLTON HALL.

1Ho new Yorker has his daily con-
duct regulated as nearly as can be esti-
mated, by twenty-three thousand one
hundred and n!nety.four laws. About
eight hundred and thirty law-books are
needed to interpret them; and, lest he
should nevertheless err, their true
meaning is further set forth in over
sixty-five thousands decisions arranged.
for convenience, in nine hundred vol.
umes Besides these, he has only the
rules of the board Of health, police,
fire department, department of streets
and other local laws, and couple of
hundred series of law periodicals.. You
could not carry the indexes alone.
Iowa has about as many.
The crying need, then, of our legisla.
ture is to make some more laws, which
will certainly do to the extent of sever.
al hundred chapters.
At one time we lawyers brought to-
gether and arranged part of these
laws in ''code" cont sing nearly
thirty-four hundred sections, for the ex-
PLANTATION of one of which we have since
procured from the judges lat our eli.
ents' expense) some thousand decisions
Most of these decisions and laws are
to limit or change or patch some other
law or to provide for some unseen case.
The need for all these laws is due to
bad conditions of life, mostly made by
laws themselves.
AS the struggle for life becomes hard
er, ingenuity gets over or round our
laws faster than we can make them, and
over none more surely or easily than
any laws designed to tax personal eff
fecta
For much Of the hardship of life tax
laws, and especially personal tax laws,
are to blame Taey drive away bust.
ness, make employment hard to get,
corrupt the conscience of the people,
and overcrowd the city, Says my read
er, ~ do not pay any personal taxes,
how do these laws affect me?' This
way: they are the last straw on the
breaking back Of tho farmer; they help
to make succcss In the village nearly an
impossibility, and so drive the rural
population into the city, there to COM
pete for every Job and to crowd every
tenement and every slum.
What will make employment plenty?
Plenty of business Why. plenty of
goods and plenty of people to buy them.
Then why drive away the goods or the
people to other cities by taxing them
when they come here?
What a boom in business we might
have were II known all over the world
that tho man or the merchandise that
touched the soil of this state II free
from taxesl How the people, not the
POD or the lazy, but the rich and saw
ing. would flock here to bring their
brains, their goods and their expendi-
ture to enrich us!
We have supply of paupers from
other lands, made so by the laws of 9TH
err lands; they do our toughest, hardest
work here; let us not tax our own,coun-
trymen into poverty!
Taxes of hundred dollars year
on farmers stock, machines and be-
longings look like a small matter. Year
by year they force him to the brink
over the brink-into ruin; they height
en- his sense of injustice and discomfort,
and make him resolve that his boys
shall have at least chance to save and
get on in the towns "The little bur-
den is heavy for the little man."
There are many other reforms need
ed. some of them radical, perhaps
mostly consisting of repeating laws; but
first things first" said John Swinton.
Stop making laws, listing bill laws. in
heritance laws, income tax laws; re-
store natural conditions Reform our
system of land transfer, SO that the la
borer may easily get a piece Of land.
Let the people get employment
Let us. have freedom to breathe, to
work, to play; then we will not need
the sweating system law, nor the labor
conspiracy law, nor a 1.-THE of the thou
sands on thousands of laws with which
socialists and charities seek to fetter
freemen.