Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1914-07-16

fight for life where wintry winds stay
Gods sun during most of the year.
| Good pople are ours because nature
placed here every inducement to be
good. Improved highways, schools,
telephones, free delivery of MAIL par
eel post, are preaching the Gulf be-
tween city and country, and establish
ing in the rural districts the suprem-
acy of culture and thought which has
ever been the earmark of pure Anglo
Saxon civilization.
And no where is the truth l SPEAK
of reflected more than in the country
press. withhold no measure of praise
from our city papers. They are patri-
OTIS they are enterprising, they are
vigilant. But conditions have neces-
sarily forced them to lean somewhat
toward the commercial trend of the
age. While keeping attuned to all the
notes of true progress, the weekly
press of our State has, if anything
leaned backward in adhering to the
ideals of journalism, citizenship and
the general good.
But, gentlemen of the Weekly
Press, | come not to praise but, Oh
behalf of the office l hold, to thank
you.
When I was elected Governor, the
States finances were bordering on
condition of utter Generalization.
There was deficit of approximately
million and a half dollars. Veterans
of the Confederacy were dying while
awaiting their meagre claims on the
, rewards. Poorly paid teachers in our
! schools were hawking their claims on
the public square and selling them at
from 10 to 25 per cent discount. Our
system of high education was marking
time in the great advance of the age
, because of lack of means. Eleemosy-
nary institutions were turning away,
or providing only the bare necessities
for the insane, the deaf, the blind. The
tax rate was at the maximum and the
Legislature in blind pantomine was
apprcpriating thousands of dollars
which did not and could not exist.
Something had to be done. Bankers
were looking askance at State obliga-
tions, and $3,5OO,OOO refunding bond
issue was near at hand
gave the subject much thought.
found that the States fiscal system
, had undergone scarce a change in over
a hundred years. 1t was established
when our population was less than
million and our annual expenditures
only few hundred thousand, when
virtually all our taxable property con-
sisted of land and slaves, when our
economic conditions were as different
from those of the present as China s
are from those of France.
found, further, that scarcely no
other State, or other government unit,
still adhered to a pass the hat system
of taxation, if l may borrow the strik-
ing phrase of Judge Hart.
l found also that Governor after
Governor for thirty or forty years and
our great Comptroller General repeat-
edly during his nearly forty years Of
unexcelled service had urged that
our seventeenth century taxing system
be brought up at least to the Nine
teenth century conditions.
l discovered Furthermore that the
great burden of taxation was falling
on the small property owner.
/ found that millions of dollars Of
wealth in the possession of rich or
well-to-do people was escaping taxa
ton.
The State had to have more money.
Should we by raising the tax rate add
to the burdens of those who had been