The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1915-05-14
Work for Legislature.

The Legislature reconvened at
Nashville Monday for fifteen days
run with mass of important leg
Iislation cut out for it that 1t is in
conceivable the body can digest and
properly dispose of in the limited
time that now remains of the bien-
NAL session.
There are some seemingly vital
things that the Legislature should
make it a point to do, however, and
first among these it should hasten to
repeal the bill abolishing the capital
penalty in murder cases and make 1t
certain beyond any legal bubble or
construction that the State will not
be left at the mercy of individual or
mob murders for at least two years
to come The Fayette County lynch
ing is a pat case in point exposing
the reckless incongruity and abb
surdity of depriving the State OF the
power to punish perpetrators OF the
crime of murder under the existing
conditions of society. In this case
negro, who may or may not have
been guilty of first degree murder,
but who would most assuredly have
been convicted and punished under
the law as it stood before the Bowers
bill was passed, was hanged from
railroad trestle, a sickening and
gruesome spectacle, by mob whose
only Ineligible excuse was that if
he was guilty of unjustifiably taking
the lives of his two victims, he could
not lawfully be made to suffer by
FORGETTING his life to the State in
retribution.
The Legislature should also
promptly undo it's work in having
passed the Cookeville polytechnic
school bill, taking urgently needed
funds from the county high schools
of the State to devote to the ques-
tionable, if not impractical, enter
prise of establishing an institution
of the kind implied by it's name in
a locality unsuited for it.
The Legislature should devote the
time at it's command to passing the
bills, enacting an
equal tax assessment measure and
primary that will enable the parties
to nominate their can
didates for State Offices by majority
verdict of their votes.
There is much other salutary and
needed general legislation which
would we'll deserve the attention of
the body, but these measures should
have the right of way until they
shall have been disposed of.
We are not unmindful of the local
measures in which Knoxville is sole
ly concerned and it is earnestly
hoped that the General Assembly
will grant this city the legislation
asked for in behalf of our moral and
CCOlOlllS wv SOlAoA0IlhS
of the non-partisan primary bill con-
ferring upon the voters of the city
the privilege of nominating by bal
lot their candidates for municipal
officers, the bill providing for the
submission to the people the matter
of a 100000 bond issue to build an
adequate and permanent water
plant, and the bill providing for the
enforcement of the interests of the
schools from politics and placing the
and full control of these
in a board of education.
The disposition the General As
sembly shall see fit to make of the
measures here enumer-
ated will go far to make or mar the
record of the present Democratic adj
and all sincere Demo-
Gratis will fervently pray that the
body will deal with them in the
manner that the highest and truest
interests of the people demand
Knoxville Sentinel.