The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1910-03-02
The Platform Again

The Springfield Reportey, COM
menting on the Tribune's recent par
agraph concerning the loose way in
which many town accounts are kept,
sensibly says:
A law providing for uniform
system OF keeping accounts could be
framed to correct this and other evils
the outgrowth of our present anti
quated and senseless system "-Lud-
low gribune.
All true enough, as any man hav-
ing any experience of public account
ing can testify. So far as the acad-
emic proposition goes, We are quite
agreed.
But there it ends. Just as often
as some daring soul brings this mat
ter up in the legislature and tries TO
argue its merits before a gathering of
men that for the most part never
have given it a serious thought and
hardly take in the full scope of its
importance, just as often these dough
ty pioneers are left to do the work
alone Nobody goes to Montpelier
to help put through law that pretty
much all practical men are agreed
would be highly desirable and greatly
facilitate public and private business
in several ways and even the news
papers which are usually generous in
their Jealous championship of such
| things are inclined either to neglect
the subject utterly, or to content
themselves with the popping of some
widowed kernel of a paragraph af-
ter the corn has been taken from the
! fire.
If we want state law providing
for a uniform system of municipal
accounting, the way to get it is to be-
gin now educate the popular mind to
understand the necessity for it and
to be prepared not only to accept
such a proposition in the Republican
state platform this summer, but to
insist upon its being realized in law
| by the legislature this fall
We have read a great deal about
how the platform should be made up
| through the state committee and
| printed in advance of the state con
vention so that the public might
know what it was to be before the
convention voted upon it. The Mes
senger does not take much stock in
/ the suggestion. When a deliberative
body will not deliberate when men
sent to a state convention to make a
| platform do not attend to business
| because they have no interest in 1t
and little special knowledge of the
subject anyway, we may expect that
! their constituents will do little better
| because the delegates are usually as
good az the men that send them, and
/ they would be better if more and bet
| ter men attended to their duty and
/ chose more competent men. If the
/ Republican communities of this state
will not take their duty seriously
| enough to choose the best of good
men to go to the state conventions
and make a serious business of fran
| ing platform, they will do no better
in passing upon such platform
| themselves.
Now is the time to make the plat
! form, now, in these months before
the state convention assemblies. Now
| is the time to thresh out these ques-
tons and draw out such manifesto
tons of public opinion about them,
one way or the other as will enable
! intelligent men on a committee of
resolutions to have some idea when
they meet as to what the people that
sent them there want, and not feel
Obliged to SLOUGH timidly behind what
amounts to a platform referendum.
Let us talk about the platform-St.
Adams Messenger.