Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-02-17
Extraordinary Committee Action.

The action of the House District commit
tee on the Senate smoke bill is surprising
from every point of view from that of the
business men who requested the legislation
as well as from that of the Commissioners
who are opposed to this particular measure.
L. is in the first place, a square reversal Oh
position. Two yeats ago the House cofh-
mittee approved and the House passed
bill amending the smoke law by allowing a
three minute period of smoke emlssioh'
without fixing a limit to the total number
of such non-punishable periods. The Senate
refused to pass the bill and it died with the
Congress. Now the Senate has passed
bill granting three-minute periods, limited
in the aggregate of smoke emission to sixty
minutes in the day and including the gov
eminent departments with other restricted
smoke emitters. The Senate bill OF TINS
year is more satisfactory to those who be-
tieve the present law to be perfect than was
the House bill of 1903. Yet the House COM
mittee which approved that measure at the
request of the business owners of furnaces,
now balks at a bill which, while granting
them relief from their intolerable burden
under the present impracticable law, yet
impo ses a check uron them. 1t is impossi-
BILE to understand the logic of such twist
of attitude.
The House committee in refusing to take
any action whatever declines to go as far
as the Commissioners in modification OF
the existing law. The Commissioners have
shown that they disapprove of the statute
as 1t stands by interpreting 1t, through the
health officer. as granting one-minute per-
rnissible period of smoke emission, in the
face of the courts Interpretation that an
emission for single second constitutes
no House committee
might well have met the views of the Com
n;issioners and of any citizens by APPROX
ing the Senate bill with an amendment fix
ing the permissible period at one minute,
instead of leaving it TO the arbitrary rulings
of the health officer, which may be changed
any day according to his whim. Further
more the House committee has gone coun-
Ter TO the real desire of the Commissioners
that the government departments, now ex-
Guided according to the court rulings from
the operation of the law, be specifically In
Guided as punishable offenders.
Ii there is serious objection on the part
of the House committee to the provision In
the Senate bill for six-minute license
when new fires are started there will be a
ger eraI agreement among the petitioners
for relief to the elimination of that feature
OF the bill What is most seriously needed
is positive legal definition of the permissi-
BILE period of smoke emission in the ordi-
nary course of boiler use. The statute now
says that there is no such period. The
health officer indorsed by the Commits
sioners and refuted by the courts, says one
minute. The Board of Trade and scores
of individual furnace owners say two min
utes are necessary to prevent injustice and
hardship. The Senate bill fixes the period
at three minutes, with reasonable limita
ton TO the total of daily smoke emission.
If the House committee, reconsidering its
extraordinary action of yesterday, will not
vote to withdraw entirely from its Illogical
position which SO completely reverses its
prior policy. it might at least without Of
Tense to the Commissioners write into the
law the existing arbitrary Interpretation
and thus prevent future lamentations by
successive health officers or by the same in
cumbent swayed by moods or theories.
What the business community wants
above all is certainty-by law and not by
administrative indulgence.