The Prescott daily news., 1915-03-05
STATE AUDITOR COFF-
 MANN RESIGNS
Dr. F. M. Dickinson, of Paragould Named as Successor. Senate Con- sumes Afternoon in Fight on
 School Appropriations

tural schools appropriation was not sufficient, real interest was injected in- to the Thursday afternoon session of the Senate by the announcement of the resignation of L. L. Coffman as State Auditor and the appointment of Dr. F. M. Dickinson of Paragould to succeed him; the appointment of James Surridge of Walnut Ridge for the six year term, W. H. Hall of Cam den for the four year term and L. L. Cotfman of Little Rock, for the two year term on the newly created Board of Control for the State Charitable institutions; closely followed by the report of the committee appointed by the Senate to investigate alleged of fers of bribes in connection with the Sawyer racing bill. This committee reported that it was unable to find anything to incriminate the nearest approach to it being the testimony of Senator Geo, A. Wagner of Crawford who testified that James A. Ptcock, former resident of his county. former superintendent of the Arkansas peni- tentiary, and now member of the Little Rock detective force. had ap- preached him with a proposition to go to his home on Thursday and re- main until Tuesday, stating that he could make it we'll worth his while to do SO. Pitcock was called before the committee and denied making any such proposition.
 The appointment of Dr. Dickinson as State Aulitor was not reported to the Senate during the afternoon, but he took office immediately after re- signing as secretary of the State High way Commission. He was prior to that manager of the rock crusher op- erated by this department and was formerly secretary of the Arkansas Farmers Union.
 Practically the entire afternoon was consumed by the Senate in continu- ing the fight on the appropriation for the four agricultural schools, or the Magnolia school in particular, for that was the only one under discus sion. In the bill this school was given about $25,000 less than the other three institutions, and Senator Smith of Columbia conducted win ming fight to have the items in its appropriation raised to par with the others.
 Thre was no fight on the appropria- tion until Senator Smith in the fore noon session offered an amendment to increase the student labor appro- priation from $6OO0 to $7500. After two hours in debate and efforts to sub stitute other bills in the Committee of the Whole. which would reduce the appropriations for all schools to S75,- 900. then $S55,000 and finally $95, ,000, which were declared out of order by Senator Futrell, who was in the chair, the student labor appropriation was raised. The debate was bitter at times Senators Lundy, Wagner, Ed mondson, Kendall and Going, being the leaders in opposing the increase, with Senator Smith backed by Sena- tors Collins, Babaniss. Burgess and Vann.
 President Lundy led the fight against the agricultural schools declar- ing that H. s. Mobley, who admitted he had been paid to lobby for the ap- propriation bills two years ago, was back again and had gone to the House to endeavor to have the University appropriation reconsidered because Of the fight that was being made on the agricultural school appropriation. He stated further that the advocates O. these schools were building a political machine, and were even then working with the Governor to get his veto on the Smith-Lever appropriation. He stated they had also tried to get Congressman Carraway to introduce a bill in Congress which would per init the agricultural schools to share this with the University.
 Senator Wagner declared that the people were growing tired of the ex- travagant appropriations for these schools and that he would circulate pc titions for the act by the people abol- ishing the schools.
 Much stress was laid upon the fact that nothirq has even been turned