The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-12-10

ing an appropriation of only 5000 to make
the private college it represented ''the
school system Growing nonsense, Ii
had then and has now no more connection
with our common school system than
Metre Dame or Eariham or any other pri-
vate college. 1t got the 5000, only be-
cause the Constitution did not allow time
for the Legislature to discuss Il. II soon
became $4,000, then $4,000. IL draws this
year 1921. $3.50, not counting the $4,000 OF
so-called bonds. payable TO nobody, on
which the State pays 3 per cent. interest.
and $496,52s.99 Of funds derived from tax
alton. now returned to the counties os-
tensibly 10 loan at s per cent. but really
10 pay 6 per cent. interest on. Marion coun-
y paid $500 this year without loaning a
dollar OF the funds, and other counties are
doing the same. All this Is the work Of
the lobby. Nobody has enough at stake TO
maintain a counter lobby, and the Legisla-
ture has not time in six weeks TO investi-
gate this outrage and look after the thou
s~Snd-and-one other matters that need at
tontion. This octopus, this gigantic school
trust, has thus lobbied the State out OF
Sl,S25,3S3 in these twenty-five years, and
IL seems to have just got fairly under way,
for II reports a pressing need" for a quar-
ter million to begin an additional plant
with. The lobby has its uses. but this is
one OF its abuses.
The next Legislature will nave to wrestle
with a comparatively new question without
the aid OF any competent lobby, yet prob
ably to be %perplexed by several. The
question of natural gas will demand the
most heroic treatment. A condition de-
mands independent legislation. That this
fuel is radiply failing is now apparent to
all. How TO conserve il is a paramount
question. We made one right move when
we forbade the consuming of it in fam
beauX. That required but little legislative
backbone, for there were at most
only a few thousand interested.
Some of them kicked, but the
Supreme Court sustained the law. We
tried to prevent its transportation out of
the State, but the Supreme Court is against
that. But the fiambeau waste is only a
drop in the bucket compared with the
wasteful consumption of the tens of thou
sands of consumers to whom IL is fur
nished without measurement. The courts
hold that the farmer who taps the supply
on his own land has no right to waste IT
in fiambeaux; what greater right has a
consumer in Indianapolis or Richmond TO
use more than he pays for? 1t is such q
luxury in domestic use that IL is even
questionable whether the State ought not
to forbid its use in large quantities in fac
tories even in the gas belt, or at least in
some way to lessen the waste. This can
not be left wholly with local city authori-
ties. No man can be elected to any City
Council that will favor selling gas by
measure only within the corporations; yet
nothing else can stop the wanton waste,
and no legislator who has future political
aspirations will dare offend the thousands
who would rather the whole supply should
be exhausted by waste than TO be re-
strained in its use. Such, therefore, is the
situation that the question must be de-
cided upon it's merits as the facts shall
| reveal them TO legislators not Immediate
ly interested. We may hope that there
are enough of these to give the whole
question a calm consideration. There NAV
be lobbyists representing local and per-
sonal interests, but no such lobby is pos
sible as the lobby that remodeled the town
ship and county business, or the lobby that
IL to look after a new election law, or that
which has the fee and salary matter in
hand Every lobby should therefore be en-
titled to a respectful hearing without hav-
ing to don some fantastic badge of au-
thority. The only thing that can affect
Chicago will be the demand there and the
supply here; the only way TO prevent waste
in Indiana Is to make every consumer pay
for what he consumes, and this may have
to be applied in some way to the factory
whose supply is from its private well.
| The moral of all this is that a lobby is
indispensable TO legislation, and forever
will be while the work of a legislature is
limited to six weeks, once in two years. and
| therefore a member of the lobby is entitled
to as much personal respect as any othe,
member OF the l~awmaking force. II is very
easy to say that every legislator should
fight shy of such Hobbies as the educational
trust, which has mulcted us into such
millions, or the schoolbook lobby, or the
officeholding lobby; but put yourself I'm the
| place of a member of the Legislature who
has everything to learn in thirty-six days.
and you would be very merciful to his
shortcomings. u. L. SEE.
Indianapolis, Dec. s.