The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-05-15
The School Tax Amendment

As The. Age-Herald has frequently said, the school tax amendment sub- mitted to the people by the legisla- ture of 1915 is so plainly what Ala bama needs that there should be no question as to it's ratification at the general election next November, but the friends of education and the pro- gressive citizenship cannot afford to take any chances.
 A we'll organized campaign to bring out the vote is necessary and, the voters aroused, it is important that the educational forces see that the ballots are cast right.
 What has kept Alabama in the list of states with high ra.e of illiteracy it is one of the few states whose il- literates number 22.9 per cent of the total population, being slightly in ex- cess of Mississippi's- the constitu- tion, which does not allow the people to levy county or district tax for school purposes.
 But this condition will be remedied if the amendment carries in Novem- Der. In several of our Alabama legis- latures bills have been introduced sub hitting an amendment, but as impor- tant as the measure was it could not muster strength enough to pass both houses. But the bill was adopted by the present legislature and Superin- tendent W. F. Feagin of the depart ment of education, member of the Alabama Educational association, and Sydney J. Bowie, who has been long an earnest champion of the measure, were naturally elated. While the most important step has been taken to re- duce illiteracy, intelligent efforts must be made from now until election day to make sure that the amend ment does not go by default.
 Taking that view of the matter, Superintendent Feagin has written letters to- MT. Bowie and other leading citizens asking for suggestions or arguments for incorporating into the campaign literature.
 MT. Bowie writes in part as follows
 l. We need the money. All other
 available sources of money have been
 exhausted and the supply is still short.
 This is the only open road to more
 money in this state.
 ?. Even if it were feasible to get
 larger appropriations from the state,
 1t would be unwise, because it would
 give to some portions of the state
 more than they need and leave other
 portions of the state far short of their needs.
 3. The cost of education, rightly in-
 terpreted, should be regarded as an
 investment and not as a tax. Local
 assessments for educational purposes
 are seldom counted as a part of the taxes of most communities. It is a thing apart, and imports different idea from that of taxation. We will not only get value received, but in- finitely more than value received, for the money we put into education. If we build a home in which to live, we speak of that as an investment, not as a tax, although it costs us
 money. If we improve our farms or
 even our live stock, we speak of the
 cost as an investment, and not as a
 tax, and this is accurate. If this is
 true in the case of a house, and
 farm and live stock, how much more
 true is it when the money is put into
 the education of our own children 10 prepare them for life. I think, in- stead of calling this a campaign for a local tax, we should rather call it a campaign for local assessment or for a local investment. We ought to