Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1904-11-04
Notice through Newspapers.


times have changed, says the Bellows
Falls Times. Vermont still has numer-
GUS rural communities where large |
majority of the citizens can be given
public notice by lacking up notices in
the postoffice and at the store. But !
there are numerous other communities |
where any such notice is entirely made
quate. Many of the existing statutes
relating to the giving of public notice
date back hundred years, and some
have not been changed in any way in
40 years. Forty years ago a notice
tackled to a board in the postofiice or
country store would be read by major
ity of the citizens of about every place
in Vermont with the exception of Bur-
! lington and Rutland. 1t would be read
because the population of all towns was
small and custom was to congregate
often at the postoffice and the store.
Conditions are now radically changed,
yet the law remains the same as it was
being read in Bellows Falls or Brattle-
boro or Bennington or st. Johnsbury or
any other place of more than 1000 or
1900 population has legal notice often
abominably written in the crude hand of
a careless attorney or officer, when
posted on a board or tackled to a post?
People of the larger towns no longer
congregate at the village store, and free
delivery and rural routes have made the
postofiice little more than distributing
center.
Forty years ago there were few news
papers and fewer readers. In Vermont
TO-DAY there are over so newspapers pub
lished in over GO towns and cities and
these 60 towns and cities contain very
nearly half the population of the state.
a statute requiring that legal notices
shall be published in the newspapers of
the state in towns where newspapers are
published instead of on shingles and
lamp posts brings the notices into the
homes of the class which ought to be
reached and which can be reached in
no other way.
The Vermont Press association, rep
resenting about all the daily and weekly
papers of the state, believes that the
proper medium for giving the desired
publicity to a legal notice is the news
paper. Of course the newspapers would
be benefited financially in small way
by the general adoption of this principle
but they are patriotic enough to believe
that the public would be much more
r benefited. If it can be shown by good
reasoning that the public would not be
, benefited they certainly don't want the
principle to prevail. Believing that
, making the newspaper the medium of
giving legal public notice, was for the
public good, the association, by its COM
: amending existing statutes to be in
troduced in the present legislature.
Three of these bills came before the ju-
, dietary committee and were slaughtered
with little ceremony. One of them
ought to have been killed. but no good
reason for not reporting the other two
, favorably has been given. One required
that warrants for town meetings should
be published in newspapers in towns
where newspapers are published. AT
present three notices posted in public
places is sufficient and in practice any
old place is public place. These war
f rants in the cities and larger towns gen
orally contain articles of vital Importance
> to the body polite. Under them large
> sums of money are appropriated, and it
is manifestly for the public good that
1 the voters have ample notice of what
f is about to be attempted. Standing on a
q reading the different articles of the war
t rant is not always conducive to mental
f digestion. By practice these warrants
are now printed on the covers of the
town reports, but the town officials and
= the printers get black in the face charg-
ing each other with delaying the appear
: ance of the report until within a day OF
| two of the meeting. Special town meet
ings are often called by posting three
little type written notices, and it is safe
, gambling that there have been consider
able sums of money appropriated at
! these meetings when 80 per cent of the
, voters of the town did not know that a
o meeting was to be held until they read
. an account of the meeting in the news
h papers after it had taken place. In fact
it is a matter of common report that if
any scheme little shady is to be worked
1--@. s1s1.-sas