Cut Bank pioneer press. [volume] (Cut Bank, Mont.) 1909-current, 1917-02-16
Farmers Are Fighting
for Power i'm House


Representative Harmon, some
years ago state superintendent of in
struction of this state, has introduced
a bill that is intended to establish a
rural school district in each county,
composed of all OF the third cl-ss
districts for the purposes of admin
istration and taxation, and sub-dis-
tricts for local administration. This
is what is known as the unit system,
and the school people say that it will
much improve the present system
through increased facilities and eff
ficiency of administration derived
from compactness and Capitalization
of power and funds.
There is one State Normal School
in Montana. 1t is at Dillon. If four
bills in the house should pass there
would be five, the new ones being at
Lewistown, Kalispell, Sidney and
Terry. Bills have been put into one
house or the other for agricultural
courses in elementary schools; for
teachers training courses in high
schools; for free night schools for
adults; for a course in the Scandi-
nav1an languages at the state uni
versity and the agricultural college.
and to provide vocational schools
through meeting the terms of the fed
eral government under which federal
aid is to be secured. This legislative
body shows a lively interest in educa-
tional matters.
A bill "to' encourage patriotism is
a measure in the house for which
Representative Ironside is
Representative Ironside is from Sill
yer Bow county and he seems des-
tined to make himself known by radI-
cal measuers. Another of his bills
provides for an eight-hour day for
everybody in the employment of an
other. The bill to encourage patri-
otism is leveled at foreigners and
the encouragement is to be extended
by requiring the foreigners to become
citizens, and when they refuse to
come in under the stars and stripes,
prevent them from securing work and
punish anybody who hires them to
work. 1t Is the sort of encourage
ment that is calculated to work wLu-
ders in the production of patriotism.
Thus far labor bills have Jared
very well in the legislature, particu-
larly in the house. The house passed
a bill giving women workers the
eight-hour day; another limiting fire
mems hours to IA hours a day, with
a provision for further service in case
of emergency; a bill for eight hours
for many kinds of working men, in
Guiding sugar factory employees and
all workers in lumber mills and saw
mills. These measures occasioned
some stiff fights in the lower cham
Der, and what the senate will do with
them remains to be seen.
Dry measures introduced in this
legislature are of a drastic and
sweeping character. Representative
Maggie V. Hathaway has secured
the passage in the house of
a memorial asking congress to
pass a federal prohibition amend
ment. Senator Amin introduced
a bill of Is printed pages,
which seems from casual perusal to
contain everything needed to stop the
use of liquor in the state at the end
of 1918. Representatives Bent and
Phelps put a measure in the house to
make prohibition effective outside of
towns on June first of this year
1t is reported that an effort will be
made to pass a law through the legis-
ldture this session abolishing voting
machines in the state, on the ground
that the machines are easily made to
produce fraudulent results. The only
place where such machines are in use
Is in Silver Bow county, and the e.
publicans of that county will father
a bill to repeal the law providing for
them.
Senator Smiths bill to nut ms
tices of the peace, in communities of
5000 people or more, on a salary n
abolish the fee system seems to have
good points and bad, according to
whether 1t is the justice or the public
that is giving it a survey. It is said
that 1t Will enable the judicial Of
ficers of the petty tribunals to be in
dependent of plaintiffs in suits, which
they are unable to be now, since the
plaintiffs bring them business and