Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1901-09-04
THE NEGLIGENT PRESS.

The territorial board of equaliza- tion in raising the tax rate has fur nished to the democratic press a very interesting subject for discussion, but the opportunity is stubbornly ignored. The topic is handled very gingerly, and the silence fills many columns. This is not fair to the readers of these organs of enlightenment. Said read CTS have right to some fireworks. Why this failure to excoriate the ter ritorial administration Are the sen tinels of the people" to remain dumb! Why this general failure to "view with alarm?" Surely it is not because the democratic newspapers have at last decided that the taxpay- CTS of Arizona have some intelligence? Can this eloquent silence be due to the fact that the late and unlamented Twenty-first legislative assembly was operated as a solid democratic ma chine and was kept steadily grinding for the benefit of the deserving faith full? Perhaps so. Perhaps our dem ocratic friends realize that memory of the last legislature is yet too vivid in the minds of the taxpayers and that it is better to postpone to a future day the task of loading the responsi- bility upon the board of equalization. Republican.
 ''The publication of the above in the Phenix Republican had the effect of bringing forth the following in our democratic contemporary, charging Mark Hanna, apparently, with being the cause of high taxes in Arizona:
 "The party of Hanna would have the people believe that the Hannite administration in Arizona is spotless and pure and the democratic legisla- ture is all to blame for increased ex- penses of this territory. Do the dem ocrats have charge of the various ter ritorial offices and territorial institu- tions which call for these legislative appropriations or are they managed by republicans appointed by Murphy and by Mckinley? These appropri- ations and extra expenses are almost wholly for the benefit of republican managed institutions of the territory. This territorial administration is run by republicans and appointees of re- publicans, and if they call for or ac- cept so much money from the legisla- ture, with no protest from a Hannite governor, who has his veto power and should be the watchdog of the treas ury instead of its chief despoiler, then, by no just course of reasoning. can the republican administration of the public affairs of this territory es- cape from the bulk of the blame for increased expenses"
 Our contemporary is possessed of a remarkably short memory and evi- dently forgets that the governors veto was interposed against certain extravagances of the last democratic legislature and the veto was overrid- den by the democratic ajority. One one would think from the above that the appropriation for patching up the walls of the territory's mud corral at Yuma, by courtesy called peniten- tiary, was the act of republican gov ernor and his republican appointees; that the appropriation for a reform school, after the territory had already built and abandoned one such insti- tuition was also the work of the same that the S2,400 voted to the territorial secretary as a bonus was their work.
 The facts are, as every intelligent person in the territory knows, and as even the editor of our contemporary probably also knows, that the in creased taxation is caused by the prOfigate extravagance of the last legislature, and that the governor had no power to prevent it, as in every instance that it was attempted by the use of the veto it was over r,,laJ