The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-09-03
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LOCAL TAXATION FOR EDUcA- TON.
A Letter from Mr. Murphy.

|
 Editor of The Advertiser:
 The recent resolutions of the Alabama Fress Association, in reference to the question of local taxation for educational purposes, represented an important public service trust that the press of Ala osma Will keep those resolutions, along With the arguments which support them, constantly before the people of the State. Inere is no more important question be- fore our legislature.
 The proposed bill simply carries into erect an explicit policy of the new con- stitutton. The bill imposes no tax. It Is not measure of exaction. It simply permits the county which is so disposed, to tax itself within the constitutional limit for the education of its childen. It IS distinctly measure of freedom.
 It thus represents policy of liberty I as well as policy of education. Better than all. 1t represents a policy of self help. While I have been somewhat con- bring the vast wealth of our country to see It's obligation toward the educational interests Of our country's children-North and South and East and West-yet have steadily insisted that a policy of self help must precede any policy of philan- | thropy
 This Is true both as consideration of principle and as consideration of neces- | sity. It is true as a consideration of principle because the only sound and I In what may be gained from without, but In what we-by our own sacrifiecs-may De ready to give to our institutions and to our children. Philanthropy itself 1t injures the spirit of self-help it is both a blunder and an offense. It is awak- ems and develops the spirit of self-help 1t is blessing.
 Moreover. a vigorous and constructive policy of self-dependence is imperative simply as a consideration of necessity. | Philanthropy can never do very much more than make, at certain carefully selected points, few demonstrations of method. and operate-in general sense as stimulus to local interest and local | enort The resources of philanthropy, as compared with the resources of taxa ton, must always be insignificant. Would that they were larger! So long. how overwhelming, it is evident that the | policy Of the State sohuld further those | measures which are calculated to arouse and strengthen the forces of local initia- l tive
 From her State funds, from the re- sources of our general State taxation, Alabama Is giving largely. But many are of the opinion that the limit of State aid has been almost reached. Yet how much remains to be accomplished! More l than fourteen per cent of the native white population of our State, despite the | gratifying progress of the past twenty years. were still nliterate in 1900. That IS large number of white people for Alabama. The number of our white people who cannot read and write exceed | ed in 1900 the number of the aggregate white population of our fifteen largest cities! Only relatively small propor- ton of Aiabama's white population is in | our cities-as l have always taken great care to say. And yet there is something in that comparison for us all to think | about.
 Our illiterates are not a degenerate stock. stock; Most of them are a God-fearing: them are people of property. This should make us all the more ready to claim for them and for their children the fullest. noblest and happiest heritage which our country and our age can bring them. Many of them are d better people than l certain representatives of our and of oth- our faith in them should be not the oc- casion of neglect but the ground of our larger consecration to their deepest and | broadest welfare.
 standpoint. IS to be chiefly advanced by wise and intelligent application of the principle of loaal taxation. Under proper safeguards and under the limit fixed by l that wishes to tax itself for better schools and a longer school term should be per- mitted to do so. We shall give a larger life to the schools by giving a larger free dom to the County.
 May close this letter by here quoting a passage from an address delivered be- | fore the faculty and students of Washing ton and Lee University at Lexington, Va. do so not in the spirit of self-reference | but in order to illustrate the fact that the work of the organization with which | I am connected has ever kept carefully in view these two aspects of educational policy-has contended that the personal wealth of all the land has a distinct ob- | lgation to all the children of the land, but that d democratic policy of taxation must always be the first support of the schools of the people,"
 "I have said that we must educate. When say 'we,' I mean that we must count all ol our people within the fellow | ship of responsibility. Within the part nership or obligation, the great masses of place of initiative dignity and service. No man can go to them with aims. To rouse them to see their duty. their duty to their children. to themselves and to how bravey and how well they them selves can perform this duty-we have here, as I have already said, the funda- mental and distinctive element in the policy of the Southern Education Board.
 But the principle of initiative must be supplemented by the principle of coop every form of commercial, religious or educational effort. No man, North or South, shares any privilege of this life for which he has paid all the cost. How l our full share of the cost of what we get? How many men in business refuse to be benefited by policies and facilities of the community which, in their value. are out of all proportion to what these men have paid? Wllo goes to college North or South and really pays there. in full. for all he gets? He may pay what Is asked or charged. but what is asked or charged is small element of the cost of what he gets.
 Who shall tell me. therefore. that the principle of cooperation may be accepted by the sons of wealth but that it may not be accepted by the children of the poor?
 "The man who goes to Yale or Harvard University, the young woman who goes to Vassar-is directly the beneficiary Of buildings and endowments which philan- thropy has given and which express the enduring truth that the education of our children, whether the children of the rich or of the poor. represents a great task of collective conservation. the task Of society and of humanity"
 It is with one of the cardinal policies of local support that our Legislators are soon to deal and I am sure we may nave every confidence in their patriotism and in their statesmanship.
 August 31, 1908.