The Mena weekly star., 1910-05-19

for the House by about the same ma jority that MT. Covington de- feated him this time which shows that it was MT. Kendall's record in the last session that caused him to be turned down.
 l am proud of the fact that 1 wrote and assisted in passing the first bill that was made law in Arkansas to requite the banks to pay interest on the county funds. It is with pleasure that l state that since that bill was passed in 1905, the county of Benton has, up to the present time, received about SIS, 900 in interest on It's funds. stand today as l stood then, to make banks pay the highest interest for the use of these funds.
 As formerly stated, have al ways been in favor of giving the people an opportunity to be heard on all matters of legislation, and since the panic a short while back, l have been more in favor of direct vote upon the deposi' tory proposition such as we had in the primary, and such as pro vided for in the two bills which l had passed through the Senate for Polk county, my reasons be- ing that during the panic referred to, banks that were acting S de- positories for various counties, refused to pay out money on cheeks, and considerable dissatis- faction came about on account of it. This to was another reason why banks should be made to pay penalty of 10 per cent per month for failure to pay checks. For that reason, I preferred that the people speak directly upon the subject.
 Not only that, but when my bill was pending ln the Senate, l received a petition with the sig. natures of more than 500 voters of Polk county, asking that l submit this question to the direct vote of the people. I filed thls petition with the bill, as the journal of tie Senate shows on page l57.
 MT. Hamilton states that when my bill, to which 1 had added Jackson county on request of Senator Reel, came into the House, he amended the bill to provide that any bank should not borrow more than 50 per cent of it's paid up capital. He states also that he was ready to pass 1t in the House as amended. This is not true, for the House journal shows that there were only two actions taken in this bill. Page 464 shows that the bill was re- ceived in the House from the Senate, and page 524 shows that without the bill ever being read :, it was postponed. Yet, MT. Hamil- ton says that the bill was post poned when 1t came up for its third reading, and that he had amended it.
 He says also that he got hold of a bill 1 had written and copied ii for Polk county alone which was numbered 297. That he passed 1T through the House and that ii died in the Senate with Senators from all parts of the s'ate telling him that if he would get me te take 1t up, they would pass it. say that his statement that it died in the Senate is bsolutely untrue. Senate journal, page 206 shows that his bill was received in the Senate o1 March 19.h. The journal also shows, on page 249, that on April 2nd, that bill passed the Senate. House journal shows on page 589 that on April 5sh7 bill 297 was received in the House from the Senate after its passage ln that, and 1t died in the House. Yet MT. Hamilton says that this bill died in the Senate.
 l notice that MT. Hamilton re. fers to the fact l amended Simp- sons Scott county bill, and that Simpson says that amendment almost killed the effectiveness of the law. But Mir. Hamilton very studlously avoids telling you what that amendment was. I can't blame him for this omission for the reason that if his knowledge of that bill reaches no farther than his knowledge of his own bills, or the actions taken on them, he could not be expected to know nyihing about the Scott county bill.
 The history of that bill is this: The treasurer of Scott county was already depositing the county funds in a bank that was paying him per cent. Mr. Simpson provided in this bill that the treasurer should deposit the money in the First National Bank of Waldron, and the bank of Waldton providing also that these banks should pay only 3 per