Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1921-04-13
THE LEGISLATURE
ENDS SESSION
Last Hours of General Assembly
Interesting In Various and
Intricate Ways. q
VERY LITTLE RAISE
Most Bills Presented Received Coz 2
sideratiOn, and Two-Thirds
Never Became Laws.

Des Moines. April II, 1921.

Des Moines, April IL, 1921.
One hundred and fifty-eight more
or less nervous wrecks left the state
capitol building last Friday night at
one o'clock and on Saturday return
ed to their respective homes after
about ninety days of Legislative SER
vice. Nervous wrecks, because the
last two weeks of the session are so
full of work and so varied in inter
est and so crowded with complica-
tions that the best of these statesmen
find it gets them all "riled up"
For instance, meeting one of the
rugged old House members in the
Senate chamber Thursday, apparent
ly just watching the upper house at
work, / asked him why he was not
over on the other side helping his
own colleagues close things up.
"Oh, h" he replied, "they are all
sore at me over there, and if I keep
on voting against their bills they
will want to kill me, so | stay over
here till some matters blow over"
AS an absent member or one not
voting at all is about the same as
one voting against a bill, the effect
of his absence was to help keep
away from many important matters,
perhaps, majority of the entire
house, which each bill must have to
pass. And what this member was
doing was felt by perhaps half the
entire membership of both bodies
they would rather be anywhere than
10 their chairs during these clos
Jag days, but duty and their oaths
vi Office required it. Ever minute.
IN these closing hours of a session,
is potential with possibilities for
good and bad legislation, and no
member can afford to absent HIM
self if he is true to his trust.
Little Raise in Taxes
There can be but little raise in
state taxes come from this or any
other General Assembly, because a
small percentage of mill levy will
take care of thousands of dollars
expense. For instance, if a mill
levy raises a million dollars-and it
does raise more than that--a matter
of fifty thousand dollars for one
thing or another does not affect the
rate of taxes very much when it is
applied to all the property of the
entire state. But a vote to cause
fifty thousand dollars of expense to
any part of the state or any county
or town of the state, may mean sew
eral mills extra levy. Thus when
the state colleges were given some
thing like six millions of dollars for
support and buildings in the next
two years, the biggest expense of
the session was provided for in a
levy of three mills or less. A
county board can cause more of a
levy than that on one bridge appro-
priation. Thus there is lot of
peanut politics in this economy pro-
gram as a statewide proposition and
many people believe that Legislative
records are made for home consump-
tion that do not look as we'll to
those who want the state of Iowa
to maintain its lead in education, in
progress, in better living.
American Legion members are
gratifed over the passage of the
bonus bill, the soldiers exemption
law and the soldiers preference law
but their pet boxing bill went down
to defeat in the Senate after it had
been battered up in the House fol
several weeks. The fact began to
stand out toward the last of the
session that many members of the
Legion did not favor or advocate this
law, and legislators were besiegeo
by opponents of the measure to re-
fuse to legalize boxing in this state
The old law still remains, however
and under it restricted boxing ex-
hibitions may be conducted as here
tofore.
A high license law for the con-
troll of the sale of cigarettes was
passed in the Senate Wednesday, af'
ter the House had favorably con-
sidered the bill. The old law is re-
garded as failure and unenforce'
able. The new law requires any
dealers selling cigarettes to pay ;