Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1905-02-04


men and women to assist the legislative
body is portrayed with big letters in
red ink.
The clerk graft is a byword But
there is more than one way of looking
at this terrible drain upon our state
treasury. AS personal matter, in
some cases, the money paid out to this
army of clerks will be a veritable God
send. Many a poor young man, with
uneompleted studies, debts hanging
over him with the~ereditor sitting on
top, poor parents, dependent brothers
and sisters, with laudable ambition
for participation in public affairs, will
find his relief in job called clerk
ship at the session Of the legislature
Many women, and girls who are needy,
with an eye for business, find the sal
ary u great benefit to them.
This money paid out in clerk hire
goes, in the main, for clothes, house
hold effects, payment of debts, for the
individual betterment of the clerk, and
it at last goes into general circulation.
What is there so terrible in this waste
of money when it is such ready and
acceptable stipend for so many differ.
ent personsf
We are in the habit Of looking at
the clerkship hire as wicked expendi'
ture of money. We imagine the legis-
lature is doing it's worst when it
places $50 needy individuals on the
state payroll for 40 days. When Son
nemann asked that joint resolution
be sent to the president approving and
encouraging him in his commendable
efforts to harness the unrestricted vio-
lation of the interstate commerce laws
by the great railway corporations, and
thus saving not only the people Of the
state of Oregon, but of every state in
the Union enormous sums of money,
the bill got two votes for its passage
and 2S against it in the senate. How
does this railroad graft compare with
the clerkship howl7 When the last
legislature was presented with the coz
poration tax bill, what did it do with
the measured Beat it, showed it under,
annihilated it and swept it off the face
of the earth; that g what the legisla-
ture did with it. Yet when this same
assembly had a few boys and girls on
the payroll for 40 days-like the pro-
cess of straining out gnats while we
swallow camels-we fight the expense
with dying determination. How many
other bills are similarly defeated, ev
cry one of which means so much to the |
tax-paying element of the state?
1t seems natural to jump on the
weak and fawn before the strong. !
Therefore, in order not to be unnat-
ural, we kick about the commendable |
hire of a few individuals, while we
pass up taxing corporations without
thought of the loss to our finances,
nor the injustice done to the taxpay-
ers. We fight over the clerk hire
while the greatest fish industry in the
world is being ruthlessly sacrificed to
the selfishness of fish operators. Our
state institutions are advertised in
daily newspaper reports as being
sources of waste and misappropriation,
and the fat salary bill strikes at an
other phase of graft which dims the
clerk hire as the MONDAY sun out
shines the tallow candle. Some state
officials get as much salary in a week
as all the clerks get for the whole 4O
days. We appropriate a half million
of dollars to the Portland fair, while
we hesitate long and dOggedly when
asked to pay the Indian war veterans,
the services of whom has made 1t pos
sible for the legislators to enjoy the
protection of an advanced state of So
ciety, as the commonwealth. There
is not a person in the whole state OF
Oregon but is willing that these pio'
neer fighters should have all they have
coming with little additional gener-
osity thrown in. The idea of with
holding money due these pathhnders
is as little understood as why the leg
islative body is so anxious not to col
leet in from rich corporations what
the state is entitled to by fair laws
If the state would ever get what 1t
had coming to it, there would be
plenty of money to go around. The
trouble is that those who should pay
a legitimate proportion do not pay 1t,
therefore the portion wrongfully with
held must be apportioned among the
rest of the people.
In the presence of so many noto-
rious CRAFTS, how it belittles great
assembly like the sovereign power of {