Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1898-06-29
HI POLL TAX DECISION.

mandate to enable John Wilson, one
of its employees, to have his name
placed on the register Of Ormsby
County, appears in another column.
The Supreme Court decided the
case in favor of the petitioner and the
attempt to d~isfranchise nearly three
thousand voters of the state of New
ada is thus relegated to the waste
dump of nisdirected political effort.
III all the history of political trick
cry in Nevada nothing so bare-faced
in design or bungling in execution
has ever been attempted.
The author of the bill, Senator
Symmetrical of Washoe, hoped by the
enactment of such a law to steal a
march 0 the voters of Nevada,
and by a single coup de grace turn
the state over to the Republican
party. The bill was passed under
the cloak of providing revenue for the
State, but vas really merely a sample
of the peculiar politics for which the
author of the bill is notorious.
The schemers in the case passed an
act retroactive in its nature which
made the requisite for voting the pay
ment OF two years Of poll taxes. The
jobbers passed the word along the line
and when the time for registration ar
rived for the fall election they expect
ed to thus be able to have a clear ma
jority on the register list.
1t happened however that Carson
having a city Charter held a city cleo
ton in the spring and this enabled
the APPEAL to make a test case.
The bill affords a striking illustra-
ton of bow bu~nglingly the work of
making laws can be d lime by a man
who is a professional lawyer.
He has been regularly admitted to
the bar was elected by the people of
Washoe county as a State Senator
and claimed to be a man versed in
both law and legislation.
The bill, over which it is presumed
he spent a great deal of time and
labor, was so utterly inadequate to
accomplish the purposes designed
that one is amazed that it ever got a
vote in the Senate after being read a sec
ond time. The bill had so MANY
glazing defects both in title and body
that it would have been impossible
tor even the author to have incorpor-
ated any more without having made
the bill consider ably longer.
Yet the Administration hackers of
the author of the bill were so certain
that his work has been all he claimed
1t to be that, that they gave him the
position OF U. S. District ATTORNEY as re-
ward for treachery to the State of
Nevada, for had his jobbery stood the
test Of the courts, Nevada would have
been turned into the Republican COL
unn and the vote, together with the
apparent falling off its population,
uses as an object lesson in the east.
Much credit is due the Tuscorora
Times Review for sounding the first
note of warning of the nafarious scope
and purpose of the poll tax bill. Hon.
William WOODBURY., who without any
fee, made the fight against the bill IN
the Supreme Court presented an a1gu-
ment that was unanSwerable on everv
point. HIS masterely dissection oil
the weak spots in the bill and its
faults of construction practically left
the advocates of the measure without
ground to stand on.
Months ago he challenged them to
produce a single authority sustaining
1t and to this day the CHALLENGE re-
mains unanswered.
They gave up the fight weeks ago
and paved the way for an easy fall bv
claiming that the silver party needed
the decision SO badly that it had to be
decided. Let any man who labors
under the impression that politics cut
the slightest figure in the conclusions
OF the Court, carefully read Judge
Bonniheld grouping of authorities.
The most hopeful as we'll as the
most blatent advocates of the measure
will be forever silenced by them.
The Court finds this spectacle pre-
sented The title of an Act without =
corresponding Act and an Act with
gu a corresponding title"