Arizona republican., 1902-10-15
"No More Examptions., 7,

The time has come in Arizona when the business of exempting railroads from taxation should cease There was probably some reason for of the past, made at a time when the territory was not so prosperous as now, but there should be no more of lt. About all the branch railroad lines have been built that are required Future railroad building will be in hooking up the existing roads into larger railroad systems, which are am ply able to pay as they go and for what they get. All the proposed new roads in Arizona are not relying alone on the development of the sections of Arizona through which they pass, but are to form part of extensive sys- tens, which seek a route through Arizona to the coast. The Phoenix and Eastern is to connect at Benson with the Bisbee system for Fl Paso and from Fl Paso east over one of the systems reaching there. The proposed road from Cochise to Naco will form a link in a railroad from Colorado to the coast at a point south of Guaymas, Mexico. Arizona has already demon- strated its vast mineral wealth and it
  the future without extending the favor of tax exemption. The Review has never opposed exempting from taxa tion branch railroads destined to reach and cause the development of mineral districts. but we shall oppose anything of the kind in the future. .'-Bisbee Re view
 So far. so good. Nobody, having the best interests of Arizona in mind. would advance the proposition that the policy of exempting new railroads from taxation for term of years is policy which should be continued indefinitely. Sooner or later the time must come when it would be folly to hold out the inducement of exemption. Perhaps that be said with reason against the ex- emption system. Against all argu- ments on that line, however. the peo- pie of the territory have figured that it was better to ''get quick action" and make the immediate construction Of needed new railroads a certainty. rather than go through a wait of long years for the slow development of the territory Thus the position of the Re view as to future exemptions is unob- jectionable. At least. it is a question upon which every citizen has the right to take either side as he chooses.
 But why does the Review refuse to be equally frank on the question of the exemptions heretofore offered and earned? Its candidate for delegate to congress, J. Frank Wilson, is going forth through all the by-ways of the territory believing like a strick- en bull that the exemption laws under which railroads have been constructed in good faith must be repudiated. Not withstanding the exemption statutes, he says the exempted roads must be taxed through a system of mileage license.
 Does the Review favor the Wilson scheme of repudiation? Why so stub bornly silent on the only practical phase of the exemption question?
 Moreover, Candidate Wilson proposes to have the revenue laws repealed as they now apply to the railroads which are taxed, and proposes to extend to these taxed roads. namely, the South ern Pacific, the Maricope and Phoenix and Salt River Valley railroad, the Santa Fe, the Arizona and New Mex ico, and other lines the tentacles of h5 Review stand for the Wilson platform?