The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1905-04-06
NEWS AND GOSSIP FROM THE
STATE CAPITOL.
ST. Paul. April 8, 1905.

A few weeks ago the St. Paul lodge
of Elks rendered banquet to the
members of the legislature and
among the many called upon to
respond to toasts was the venerable
Senator from Winona, Mr.. Fitzpatrick.
l mention this because Of the aptness
OF the Senator's closing words on that
occasion, words which brought forth
spontaneous laughter and applause
because they hit the nail squarely on
the head. He wound up so-fashion:
"We Legislators naturally enjoy
being banquetted by the citizens of
the twin cities, if for no other reason
than that during the first half, at least,
of the session, we are kept busy
legislating for the benefit of Hennepin
and the temporary relief of Ramsey"
Those who are versed in matters legis-
lative will appreciate the aptness of
the above words, because as, a matter
of fact most of the bills passed in the
early part of every session are So
called "local" measures, and the two
big counties of Hennepin and
! Ramsey are always on hand with a
bunch of such bills.
Several measures of general i'm
portance have passed either the senate
or the house but few have as yet snc-
ceeded in running the gauntlet of
both branches and become law. Up
to last Saturday the senate had passed
60 house bills and had 103 under
consideration, some in committee,
and the rest on general orders or the
calendar. On the other hand the
house had passed only 50 senate bills
and had 81 still awaiting action.
There have been in all nearly 500
bills introduced in the upper house
and about 800 in the lower house.
From these figures it will be noticed
that with only IA more legislative
days in which to work there are over
11OO bills to be acted upon. OF course,
a great many are road and bridge
bills that will be incorporated in the
general road and bridge bill and
many individual appropriation bills
will be cared for by the Omnibus"
bill. From now on, however, it will
| not be rare occurrence to have either
branch pass from 25 to so bills in one
day, as the calendar is daily growing
longer.
AS predicted in last weeks letter
there is little hope of any primary
election legislation at this session.
One day the latter part of last week
the house had under consideration five
bills relating to the primary law and
every one of the five was killed. The
senate elections committee has practi-
cally decided to do the same with the
bills before it on the subject.
4 i. !.
The house last week passed the
Perley bill, H. F. No. 266, which
provides for divesting the Board of
Control of it's financial management
of the University and Normal Schools,
except as regards the purchase of fuel,
placing of insurance and the super
vision of erection of new buildings.
There seems to be some hope that this
bill will be passed by the senate,
though in doing so the senate will, in
a measure reverse itself, as it has
previously defeated similar measure.
There is little question as to the
senate passing the Perley bill if
Senators Peachey and Buck do not
insist upon including the Owatonna
and Fairbault institutions. If they
keep up their fight the fate of the bill
is sealed, but there is always the
possibility that few senators may
change their minds even within the
limits of one session.
That was rather a peculiar piece
of legislation that passed the senate
the other day, namely, Cowan's bill
to change the name of Pine county
to Clover county. Senator Cowan
informs me that his bill is very
popular with the people of Pine county,
and if they want the change they
ought to be accommodated. Just
after the passage of the bill just men
toned, Senator Shell in a spirit OF
fun, sent up a resolution to change
the name of St. Louis county to
"Alfalfa. If the laugh that greeted
the reading of the resolution had been
boiled down into chorus of "ayes'
the resolution would have bee unani-
mously adopted. But laughs don't
count.
The senators are quite generally
being flooded with petitions, letters
and kilograms in regard to the Nolan
reciprocal demurrago bill. So far
most of the petitions that have been
| received and sent To the desk have