The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1901-04-05
Politicians Scheme to Load Down
Primary Election Bill.
Divorciees Most Wait Six Months Before
Remarriage...Last Day for New
Business.

100 laws. With today there are ten
working days before adjournment, so
it is evident that the legislative mill
must be kept turning pretty steady
The only measure of state Importance
yet to be acted upon are the gross
earnings, omnibus appropriation and
direct primary bills. There is of
course much of considerable import
ance before both houses besides these
three measures, but it is clear that
much of it must fall by the wayside
in the general cleaning up.
| A resolution has been adopetd in
STRUGGLING the bribery investigating
committee to report to the house to
morrow.
The Deming bill, to protect the
game and fish within a radius of 3, 600
feet from any public park, has been
recommended to pass the senate.
The direct primary law will meet
| it's greatest danger tomorrow when it
comes up in the senate as special
order for II o'clock. Senator Roverud
will then move to have it referred to
a special committee with instructions
| to redraft it. Opponents of the system
in this way hope to eliminate its good
features, prevent its application to
| legislative, congressional, judicial,
park, library and school officers and
to leave it in such shape that it cannot
become hurtful to professional politi-
clans.
| The strength of the opposition has
been enlisted for this course A we'll
organized group will engineer the plan
and use every parliamentary means of
carrying it through. Should it sue
| coed the way will be opened for I'M
limited delay, since the close of the
session is approaching and it is becom-
| ing more and more difficult to handle
| important measures with due con-
sideration.
The com mittee reference of the bill
will probably mean that it will not
appear again in the senate for week,
even though its supporters use their
| best efforts. 1t will give shrewd
politicians, a number of whom are in
cluded among its opponents, an oppor-
tunity to frame new schemes to kill it
Off
The fight against the bill has mar
rowed down to a question of what it
shall include. With the pressure for
its passage it is generally conceded
that unless the plan outlined is sue
cessful it will go through the upper
house in some shape. In the event
that Senator Roverud fails the whole
fight will be centered on the effort to
include state officers, and failing this,
to eliminate all the political offices
and leave the law harmless as far as it
concerns those to whom politics is a
business. The opposition knows that
with state officers included the measure
will not pass, and cares little which
course is pursued, since if it does not
or passes in harmless shape their in
terests are equally secure.
Letters from the country districts,
where senators opposing the system
have asserted that it is not wanted,
are already arriving in large numbers.
Those who are leading the fight for
it's passage rely now on the hope that
before the special order comes up the
country will have taken sufficient in
terest to force it's representatives into
line.
The farriers of the state scored a
victory in the senate Saturday and Sc
cured a recommendation for passage of
their bill, introduced by Senator Bene-
dict, providing for liens on horses and
other animals for the cost of shoeing.
More than two thousand horse
shoers besieged Senator Wilson for
the passage of the bill, and when he
mentioned the fact similar statements
came from all over the senate The
aggregate of the petitioners seemed to
include enough men to care for all the
armies of Europe.
Should the bill pass any man who
does not pay his shoeing bills runs the
risk of lien upon his driving stock.
Tie horseshoers assert that the habit
of forgetting to pay the blacksmith is
very widespread
Senator Stockwell of Minneapolis,
a Democrat and the only 'really''
radical in the Legislature, precipitated
the first genuine debate of the session
on the subject of divorce Saturday,
and although he proposed several
startling theories was finally turned
down by vote recommending the
Umland divorce bill to pass. The
measure provides that no marriage of
either party shall occur until six
months after divorce
81 am not one of those men that sees
any danger in DIVORCE he asserted.
''Let people sever their martial rela-
lions when they please. I tell YOU
gentlemen, that easy divorce would
lead to greater happiness of the human
race. This bill simply tends to i'm
morality. 1 do not believe in curbing
the desires of people who wish to sever
one relation to engage in another
more attractive. Legal bars will en-
courage them to worse things.
'Six months wait before another
marriage 1t is absurd, gentlemen. I
am in favor of letting divorced persons
marry again within six minutes if
they want to. -
| Everyone expected that Senator Will
son of Hennepin would do just what
he did and the pruning he gave the
statements of his colleague were the
more entertaining because they were
generally expected.
SIT is an absolute scandal to this
state, the way divorces are sought and
granted, he declared "Why, in
Minneapolis judge assured me that
out of sixty-three divorce actions on
the calendar in one term, all but three
or four were brought on the ground of
desertion. 1t is reproach to morality
when the situation is such that man
may enter thoughtlessly upon such a
relation and feel, with reason, that
he can simply throw it off if it be.
comes irksome. More than that, YOU
know as well as that large percent
age of the divorces granted day by
day are secured by collision between
the parties. This bill puts stop to
that and it should pass.''
| Senator Schaller prefaced the actor