Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-08-09
Techs Threatened Disaster:
The Legislature Should Act

The Legislature ShouIG Act
~ EALIZING from the outset the grave
X fiscal problems with which the Legis-
lature is confronted, and thoroughly in
accord with the Governors wish that the
States expenditures be kept within it's in
come, The Journal has watched all efforts to
that end with sympathetic interest, ii not
always unqualified approval, and has careful
ly refrained from capt1ous criticism. That
there must be the utmost reasonable econo-
my if Georgia's financial house is to be put
in order needs no arguing to the fairminded
and informed. This, indeed is the one way
to escape from present predlcaments and to
prepare for full-sinewed construction in the
years ahead We have raised objection,
therefore, to any defensible retrenchment,
nor do we mean to do so now. But there
overhangs one of the most servceable and es-
sential of the States institutions a crisis
which no well-wisher of Georgia can afford
to ignore. The Georgia School of Technology
is threatened not only with impaired useful
ness, but with disaster-with starvation and
disruption.
This institution to which thousands of our
sturdily ambitious boys, citizens of tomorrow,
look for their education, and on which de-
pend vast hopes for the Commonwealth up
building and prosperity, has asked for
years maintenance fund of two hundred and
twenty-five thousand dollars. That is the least
which the school can efficiently operate.
1t Is the least, as carefully prepared budget
attests. with which downright necessities can
be met. Barely did it suffice to carry the
school through the last academic year, when
the enrolment was two thousand four hun
bred and fifty-nine students, exclusive of the
summer school. How, then, could a much
smaller sum do for a much larger enroll
ment in the coming year?
At the 1920 session of the Legislature it
was shown to the satisfaction of the most
I'D %Io Ind oo6
needed urgently, an increase in its annual
allotment of one hundred and twenty-five
thousand dollars. The house voted an ad-
ditional one hundred and twenty-five thou
sand, which the Senate, because OF certain
political exigencies, reduced to one hundred
thousand. No informed person gainsaid the
wisdom of the increase, and it undoubtedly
would have been enacted but for the deplor-
able fact that in the closing hours of the
session all appropriation bills were tabled.
Facing crisis, the Tech appealed to its
friends, and they generously made up, from
their private means the deficiency of one
hundred thousand dollars for the mainte
nance of this State institution. But that
extraordinary favor cannot be asked again
or If asked, certainly would not be granted.
Men argue, and rightly, that the State should
provide for at least the upkeep of it's insti-
buttons, especially in the case of the Tech,
to which public-spirted citizens and believers
in education have made gifts amounting to
nearly three millions.
Thus it was that the school came to the
present Legislature for the two hundred and
twenty-five thousand dollars so plainly and
so imperativ needed. Imagine, then, the
CONSERVATION of those fully measuring the
fact, when the House committee not only
failed to recommend the one hundred thou
sand increase required, but proposed a ten
per cent decrease in the old appropriation,
utterly insufficient though it year ago
and notwithstanding a thirty per cent in
crease in Techs prospective enrolment. The
Journal cannot believe that either the House
or the Senate, upon mature thought Will
pass an appropriation measure constraining
SO grave an injustice to the commonWeal.
We cannot believe that the committee itself
approves at heart so grievous a sacrifice of
educational interests and of the hopes and
rights of Georgia youths. We know that the
rejecting public would emphatically disap-
prove so hurtful blow to the States forces
of construction and progress.
Consider the dsappointments, the losses, the
backsets. the far-reaching humiliations and
injuries that Georgia will suffer- should this
policy prevail. Tech would be forced to turn
away hundreds of boys seeking admission
il not hundreds scores already enrolled;
to accommodate them the present appro-
priation is impossible. Further, the two and
one-half million dollars of gifts promised the
School in it's campaign for "Greater Geor
gia through a Greater Tech" would be haZ-
arded. This fund was pledged entirely and
exclusively for purposes of improvement and
expansion, not one penny of it being available
for maintenance. 1t was pledged moreover,
with the understanding that the State would
provide reasonably we'll for the upkeep of
it's institution to which an interested pub
lie was generously giving. Would it, then,
be unnatural, if the State fails egregiously
short Of it's own Obligation for these sub
scribers to cancel their subscriptions? Some
already are threa tening to do sO-and they
will have no difficulty in finding other States
to match their donations dollar for dollar, or
two for one. To jeopardize and cut short these
sinews for Georgias industrial upbuilding and
prosperity would work to the disadvantage
of every group of her people and, in the end,
deprive her treasury of millions of revenue.
To refuse the Tech fair and reasonable ap-
preparation for maintenance would be to
penalize educational expansion and turn back
for dreary years the hands of progress and
achievement.
This we say keenly mindful of the fiscal
problems with which the Legislature is Crap
pling and keenly appreciatiye of its efforts to