Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1915-04-07
THE LEGISLATIVE GRIND.
(By G.. J. Buell. for the Tribune).

All the bills are in, unless the Gov
ernor should recommend something
as an emergency measure:-about
two thousand bills all told in both
House and Senate.
Surely we are much governed
people; but that is no more than the
usual number that the ordinary legis-
lature thinks the people need.
Bills to force the people to do
things, and bills to tell them what
they must not do-a bill to legalize
the furnishing of skinned milk in
place of the real thing, and bill to
put the breath of life into rotten
cream and make it live again in the
form of good sweet butter;-one of
these to protect the babies from get
ting too much fat in their food, and
the other to enable the big butter
makers to put fat into our food that
ought to go to make wagon grease;
bills to patch up the botch work of
previous legislatures, and bills to give
certain classes of doctors monopoly
in the business of patching up our
health ;-bills to make it easier for
the lawyers to run their trades union,
and bills to make it harder for the
corporations to skin the labor unions;
bills to abolish useless boards and
commissions, and bills to create other
boards and commissions more useless
still;-bills to protect the steel trust
from the full effect of the 20 mill loo.
al tax, and bills to save railroad yards
from the dangers that might follow
if poor washerwomen and others were
not prohibited from crossing the
tracks;-bills in the interest of tenn
perance and bills in the interest of
boOze;-bills to make the state part
ner in boxing matches, and bills to
regulate the making of love matches;
bills to tell people how to get mar
ried, and bills to define the path that
leads to the divorce court; bills to
stop grain gambling, and bills whose
effect would be to make real estate
gambling safer;-bills to bind the
cities hand and foot, and turn them
| over to the street car company, and
bills to compel the telephone COM
panies to serve the people as we'll as
their stockholders bills to relieve
the people from unjust taxation, and
bills to pile on more taxes STILL
bills to protect the houses of ill fame
| and make it easier for landlords who
rent property for such purposes;
bills to repeal one bad road law, and
bills to patch up another nearly as
bad;-bills to punish crime and bills
| whose only effect would be to make
more criminals;-then bills to prose:
cute criminals the other bills had
made, and finally bill to pay pub
lie defender whose duty it should be
to protect people unjustly accused,
or who had innocently fallen into the
traps that the laws set for unwary
feet;-and even this is only a small
part of what might be written about
the laws that the various members
think the people need.
| There is one good thing about all
this,-more than three quarters of all
these bills are amendments to exist
ing laws;-patches that have been
found necessary to make old laws
look respectable. This is encourag-
ing-it looks toward improvement. If
we keep on patching up our laws. we
may sometime get them into better
shape, where they will do less injus-
tice.
There is another good thing about
it all. It gives the members some.
thing tn do while they are here, and
most Of the bills are killed anyway,
so no harm is done by them.
Then there are many bills repeal
ing old laws or parts Of laws, and this
again is encouraging.
There is an old saying that you
can't make men good by passing laws.
This is very true, but the repeal of
bad laws will leave men more free