The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-08
AILANTA'S MAYOR IS
 PLANNING REFORMS One Project Is to Gut Down
 Departmental Boards CLEANING OF STREETS Regulation of Tax Assessments Is An- other Plan of the Mayors By
 Which Owners VIII Share Equal Burdens

Atlanta, January 7.-(Special. )-Some in- teresting as well as important municipal reforms are scheduled for Atlanta this year and next. if the ambitious pro- gramme of the new mayor and council Is carried out. Mayor Courtland s.. winn has not only declared for these things, but has gone. vigorously to work on some of them. after having been in of flee only a few days. If he gets them all put through during his two-year term he will succeed In outdistancing almost any mayor Atlanta has had.
 One of his projects-one which, by the way, Mayor Maddox also worked with is to cut down the cumbersome depart mental boards. Atlanta now has about ten of these boards, with dozen mem bers on each. The result is that one or more of them is continually in stew, political or otherwise. It is proposed to cut these down to five regular members each, with the mayor and councilman as ex-officio members, which will make seven. Under the mayors recommenda- ton council has already referred the mat ter to a committee with instructions to draw a charter amendment to be enacted by the legislature at its next session; i; but quietly 1t is stated that good ma jority of the council is opposed to the reduction with the chances that 1t will be defeated without ever getting to the legislature for action.
 Probably the biggest work before the administration is sanitary reform all along the line. involving better sanitation and cleaning of streets and particularly the extension of water and sewers to about 5000 houses within the city limits now without them. The city hasn't the money to do the work necessary to insure a reduction of the city's death rate, which is now higher than that of almost any city of similar pretensions in the south. This cleaning up business and keeping clean. is gigantic undertaking and it is likely to be several years before Atlanta gets in good shape in this respect. Enforcement of the rule that the fixed basis of assessment shall be applied alike to all property regardless of who owns 1t or where 1t isflocated. looks all right in theory. but 1t Is very different mat teI III pI4Stac0sr 4S ID AtoevAASuo taAos hAoia priced, centrally located business property in Atlanta has never paid taxes upon az high assessments as residence property, and recent efforts to get 1t up to that standard have not met with any great degree of success.
 These are some of the more ambitious plans of the new administration of gen. eral interest. Among others are the pro. posal to get increased salaries for the city's school teachers, which gives some promise of success: the establIshment oi
 night school for girls as a part ol
 the public school system; increasing the medical inspection of school children SC
 as to take in every possible and essentia
 feature. and others of purely local ma
 ture.
 Interest in Labor Decision
 Farmers All over Georgia are interested
 in the recent decision of the United States
 supreme court, which declared unconsti tutional and invalid the labor contrac,
 law of Alabama. because 1t is charged
 that law involves conditions bordering or
 peonage
 The Georgia law is similar in many re spects to that of Alabama. its object be-
 ing to prevent laborsr from securing | advances of money or provisions based upon a contract to work for q certain length of time, and then to jump the game before hig edyauces are worked out