Arizona republican., 1903-03-21
The Extravagant Legislature and Its
 inconsistency.

One of the most absurd situations ever presented in any legislative body held the boards for hours on the final night of the Twenty-second legislature. After adopting without question items carrying thousands of dollars in use- less expenditure, hours were consumed in wrangling over less than s200 in graft for rural newspapers.
 More than twelve thousand dollars had been appropriated for the hire of useless clerks, and job-printing steals aggregating nearly two thousand dol lars for favored democratic newspap- CTS were approved, but after swallowing the camel the legislature strained at the gnat contained in the petty graft. And to make the situation more absurd, certain papers in various parts of the territory were to receive the favor of public money without question, but other papers. without explanation, wera to be arbitrarily excluded.
 AS to the larger graft. it is only neces- sary to point out that, whereas four years ago the printing of the biennial | reports of the territorial officials cost but $2,6OO, and two years ago but s2,100. | this legislature paid s4,500 for the same l reports. The extortionate sum of $715 of this amount was for "extra copies of the auditors report"-an expendi- l ture for which there should not have l been one cent. But it was necessary to take care" of the democratic printing offices at Prescott. Tucson and Bisbee. This whole business of appropriating
 money from the treasury by each legis-
 lature for the benefit of newspapers is
 something of which the territory should
 be ashamed. In the frontier days, when
 newspapers were struggling for exis-- ence. a convenient and perhaps wise method of assisting them in their work of advertising the territory and keeping
 the torch of civilization burning was
 found in paying them for publishing
 the legislative proceedings. But there
 is no longer a necessity for this cus-
 tom. Arizona has reached a point in
 population and wealth from which the newspapers can go ahead on their own
 merits. Those which deserve to pros
 per will prosper, and the others will
 fail. This year the legislature, instead l of recognizing that the time has come
 for putting a stop to this unnecessary
 expenditure, took the wrong direction.
 After providing a fat graft in job
 principal democratic papers outside of
 Phoenix. it contracted for a Phoenix | publication to be it's organ" at $500 for the session, because this excellent publication had no job printing office.
 Then, in the original appropriation bill, the sum of $500 was provided for the
 other democratic paper in Phoenix,
 flor publishing the legislative proceed ings" and for all the papers in the terri
 tory the sum of SIP or s36 was appro-
 priated for copies furnished the mem
 bers during the session-s72 for the dailies and S36 for the weeklies. Then, tSOiilcOOuy III lle lllleISSl Ol IdlT pldy insisted that if the democratic papers
 of Phoenix were to have donation from the public treasury-one to have $500 for being the organ" of the legis- lature and the other s3OO-the republi- can papers of Phoenix should be treated likewise, and the bill included them at $500 each for their daily publica ton O. the legislatures doings. The Republl-
 can did not need the money and did not ask for it, but of course will not be so quixotic as to refuse it.
 But after doing all this, how ridicu- lous is was for the legislature to COZ
 sume hours in fighting over the Ques-
 ton whether a majority of the rural papers should have s36 each. or all of
 them should have that sum.