The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-02-08
TAIKFiELD

prlnclpal address or the evening was
 made by Attorney Clitus H. King, | who took for his subject, "The In- terest of the Farmers in the Legis- | lature." He said he did not like the ! subject. We should not take interest l in legislation as farmers, business men or trade unionists, but as cItl-
 zens. Legislation should not be in the interest of Labor or Capital, but of the people at large. This doctrine | is old-fashioned, but it is the policy
 we must get back to if we are to con-
 tinue as a free people. There are | is to catalogue the numerous bills, | resolutions and petitions that are
 pending before the various commit tees. This can be done by anyone of you who has the patience to go over the latest files of the state press. The | other is to try and gather from the mass of proposed legislation the drift and tendency of what is doing at Hartford.
 It is not so much what is done by the legislature as what they intend to
 do. For example, one of the brilliant
 minds in the Senate is credited with
 introducing a bill taxing beer brought
 into the State at the rate of 25 per
 cent. per barrel, and yet any school boy should have been able to have
 told him that no such tax could be levied because of the Federal COnSti- tuition. This is one of the straws that
 point out to us present day conditions. What we need is grounding in the principles of government. If the average voter would take the pains
 to acquaint himself with the history
 of his country-and no man should be allowed to vote who has not a working knowledge of his country's s history-half our present day ppliti- cal questions would be solved. This brings us logically to the so- called direct primary legislation, a
 question perhaps more directly inter- esting to those of us who live in sma Il l towns than any other which is likely | to be passed at Hartford this winter.
 ly, takes away from both voter and 1 party the right to hold caucuses and | conventions and really compels the l holding of two elections, one for the | nomination of candidates and the | other for the election of the candi- | dates nominated at the first election.
 There is also the cumbersome method
 of keeping every one out of the rum | ming except the two great parties. 1t
 practically prohibits a poor man from | becoming a candidate for office. The | most able advocate of direct primary
 law in this state, in answer to this objection, said that running for office | was not the pastime of the indigent. | Since he made this remark Connecti- | cut has elected, under our present | system, governor WHO OHiy spent l $4,000, half his salary for the term, over man who was willing to ad-
 init that he spent nearly $40,0O0 to 1 be defeated. The advocates of this 1 sort of legislation believe that it will | improve our elections. They are ! and they are inoculated with the
 modern notion that people may be | made better because of the statute in ] such eases made and provided.
 If half the time, effort and money | that is spent in obtaining new legisla- ] ton and putting new laws on the statute books, was spent in trying to l improve the class of. men which is | to become voters, it would make lit | tie difference what your caucus law l was or is. This is we'll illustrated by 1 the ballot laws. A good many of us can rem ember the days when a man took a printed ballot from some party ! worker, gave his name to a checker, and cast it without further ceremony.
 The method of voing has been grad ! ually reformed from that day to the present year of grace, when it has been solemnly decided in Brothwell vs. Lobdell, ct. al, that ballot cast in Fairfield without an x in the at the head of the ballot was void, and by an equally learned court that the same manner was of full force and effect.
 What you want is precaution in
 making voters. Comparatively few men. if they fully appreciated what elections meant, would sell their votes.
 And what I have said applies equally
 as we'll to the corrupt practices act:
 The advocates of the law which
 makes it necessary that every candi-
 date for office should file sworn
 have us believe that the last dollar
 had been expended with this law.
 Yet election expenses have been climbing upward by leaps and bounds until fortunes are thrown into the
 balance with the recklessness of the ats kpnss Tanpee saG ws ssd efa tho
 British Army did with him when % he ne was hurt by bursting shell. He lost consciousness and when he came to he found himself lying beside on open grave, a parson reading the and all preparations made for a mili- tary funeral. He sat up, spat the di-t out of his mouth and remarked that there was any amount of flub dub to bury a man but not bit of precau- tion to see whether he was dead or not"
 The measure that is attracting the most attention in the press is of course the Public Utilities Bill. This meas ure, is an attempt to give the public d D0Ct0T CHdHCe III Uedl1nS w l the great public utilities corporations It
 is the logical outgrowth of the doc
 Urine that a public utilities corpora
 tion should be monopoly. If these
 corporations are to be monopolies, 1t
 logically follows that the public
 shot.id regulate them. If this law is
 passed you will probably have to give
 your seat to the stout woman with
 two babies and three bundles just the
 same, but it is step in the right
 direction. Then there is the work
 ingnen's compensation act, which
 seeks to remedy the admittedly obso-
 lete fellow servant doctrine; a doc
 Urine which today in practice runs
 against the employe and in favor of
 the employer
 The thought that I would like to
 leave with you tonight is this: You as Changers, farmers, owners of the
 soil. most of you descendants of the
 men who made this state. whose faith
 CTS helped make this nation, should
 not forget the heritage that is your
 birthright. That if we are to main
 tain our liberties, it will be at the cost of constant effort. "Men, not
 gods devised it; men not gods must
 keep it" That you must look to it
 that a high standard of public moral
 ity be maintained; that the voter
 must be taught the importance of his
 privilege and his duties and responsi-
 bilities; that laws alone will not make this a better country to live in, but
 the fart that each voter takes an in-