The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-08-05
Argument Is Presented for
 Cutting DouUn South s Power
Segel of New York Presents Elaborate Data Show How Four Big States of Union Are Being Badly Treated
 by the South and West

presidential election And yet they had | less than one-thrd of the electoral vote and less than one-third of the House membership. New York alone paid one ] third of all the taxes. and has only one tenth of the House membership. with
 only two of the twenty-five members of the tax framing committee, and only
 one of twenty-five of the members of the appropriations committee.
 Under present conditions, southern and western states. which pay only an | infinitescimal portion of the taxes, hold | a majority in Congress and dictate the | assessment of taxes they do not pay and the spending of money they do not supply. They put this financial burden on the industrial states and keep it off the agricultural products
 Largely this preponderance of power has resulted from the fact that repre- sentation in Congress is based upon total population. The great northern and in- dustrial states-which pay the bulk of taxes-have for years been spending vast
 sums of money to educate home-born
 and immigrant alike with the duty of
 exercising the right to vote. Tn the south. particularly. the effort has been to discourage the majority of the popu- lation from voting. The result has been that states which financially support the government have a representation in making the laws entirely out of propor- ton to the number who voted For ex- am pie (and no effort is made here to cite
 extreme cases), Mississippi has a repre- sentative in Congress for every HOO
 who voted and Florida for every 20 GOO, two states paying the most taxes, each has representative for every 10000 of actual voters.
 REPRESENTATION ON VOTE
 With a strong sentiment m the@ House
 in favor of cutting down the membership instead of enlarging it-becausel it is al- ready of unwieldy size for expeditions transaction of important busness-mem- bers of the census committee are seri- ous1y considering the advisability of making the re-apportionment on the basis of votes actually cast, instead of upon population. This would mean the loss of about twenty votes in the House from the number now held by Representatives of southern states
 ''The inequality that now exists Is fur ther emphasized by the fact that New York, paying one-fourth of all the taxes, has no important committee chairman ship But Iowa. which pays but orie-one hundred and fortieth of the taxes, has Representative Good as chairman of the appropriations committee, and of the new powerful budget committee which has charge of the spending of most of the money; Chairman Haugen of the agricultural committee. and Chairman Kennedy of the rivers and harbors com mttee, both big spending committees; and Chairman Towner of the Indian af- fairs committee, which also authorizes big appropriations. Iowa, furthermore, has Representative Green on the ways and means committee, which imposes the taxes.
 Again, Michigan, which pays one nineteenth of the taxes. has Representa- tive Fordney, chairman of the ways and means committee, while New York, which pays one-fourth of the taxes, has one majority member and one minority member of the twenty-five members of the ways and means committee.
 ''The four states, New York, Pennsyl- vania, Illinois and Ohio pay s2,7S7, ,216,9 ,92o taxes, or more than one-half the total and have 12S Representatives in Con- gross. Twenty other states with the same number of Representatives, pay only $407, ,SS5, ,657, or only about one-thir- teenth of the total taxes These states are Alabama. Arkansas. Florida, Geor- gin Kentucky. Mississippi. South Caro- lima, Tennessee, South and North Dakota, Arizona. New Mexico, Idaho Montana Utah. West Virginia, Kansas, Iowa, Ne braska and Oklahoma These states do not average s4,000.000 in revenue per Rep resentative in Congress.
 Yet, during the democratic control of