The Adair County news. [volume] (Columbia, Ky.) 1897-1987, 1913-02-12
TROUBLE THICKENS
AROUND FRANKFORT
Claims, Claims Everywhere, But
Not a Cent to Pay Them.
EDUCATORS ARE EXCITED.
List of Appropriations That May
Be Held Up indefinitely.

Homer in one of his tales relates how
Odysseus in departing from the Isle
Aeolian, received from Aeolus wallet
in which were confined all the winds.
1t was stored in the bottom of the
boat, and while OdySseuS was asleep
his companions suspecting that the
bag contained some precious gift
opened-it and let all four of the winds
out at once with disastrous results.
Whoever steers the good ship of State
in Kentucky over the financial depths
through the threatened storm of con-
tending winds will have to be an
OdysSeuS that won't 60 to sleep on the
job and must have some lusty fellows
on the rowlockS.
The first to open corner of the
wallet and let out bit of wind was
the department of education. With
suspicion born of experience, educators
apprehended that any policy of "re-
trenchment and reform" will first be
visited upon the schools, because there
in times past, it has been found that
fewer polical influences have been dis
turbed by the retrenchment. So they
are planning to lay before the county
superintendent, at a meeting in
Frankfort, April 2, and later before
the teachers and trustees, at the meet
ing of the Kentucky Educational Asso-
citation in this city, a novel plan of
organization, whereby the solid inf1u-
ence of 5000 teachers and Superin-
tendents and school trustees of every
county, reaching, necessarily, the pa
irons, will be opposed to any effort to
cut into school appropriations.
It's an ambitious scheme, aud what
the schools to do boldly other interests
are doing less ostentatiously, but how
effectively will be seen when all the
winds are speedily let loose out of the
wallet and the boat hegins to rock
whether our Odysseus will prove him.
self no sailor and get sea sick, or the
crew will mutiny, or whether they
will stick vallantly by the helm and
oars The opinion is growing that
the whole Democratic party is riding
in that boat, and its fate depends on
on the boats weathering the storm.
Aeolus can hardly be expected to send
it forth from his shores under so
suspicious conditions another time i'm
a generation.
SCHOOL FUNDS AT STAKE
What the investigation now being
made by the State Inspector and Ex-
aminer will develop no one can tell.
The school men are taking precautions
to protect the welfare of their insti-
buttons against misguided retrench-
ment which would cripple them: but
the embarrassment of the administra-
ton is fOreSeen to be in discriminat.
ing between the good and the bad.
If any one in the educational depart
ment has been playing politics for his
own benefit, he is going to be the first
one to cry out that the schools are
attacked and screen himself behind
the educational system. While he is
doing that and the just school men
are trying to protect their institutions
from danger, the whole issue Of re
form is apt TO be lost sight Of The
program of reform mapped out con-
templates al analysis of expenditures
Of all institutions and departments,
it is declared. If anyone has been
Squandering money i'm the name of
education of anything else, it will be
exposed. The summary of all the
work will 90 before the General AS
sembly eventually and with it the re-
quirements of same departments and
institutions for the ensuing two years
GUARDING APPROPRIATIONS.
The underlying idea, aside from the
busineSS-like proposition of informing
the Central Assembly as to exact con-
dltions, so it con act intelligently, is
to get back TO the law: to appropriate
only such money as the law permits,
and TO spend it only as the law directs.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals long
since evolved rule, known as the doc
trine of contemporary construction.
HEbich in popular terms means that
where the language of astatute is open
to two constructions, either of them
valid, the construction placed upon it
by the official charged with its execu-
tion at the time the law was enacted.
shall prevail. Three conditions are
essential to the application of the doc
trine-the language of the statute