The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1929-12-17
A Snecial Session


without pay checks and many schools faced
nv the probability of closing after the first OF
The wear. q demand is made by the impover-
isbed counties for a special session OF the
LEGISLATURE to secure funds for so basic a
necessity as education.
Were it probable that the legislature
could be called together for day to appro-
pirate money for this purpose and have them
go home without other action, the thought OF
a special session would not terrify, as it does
terrify, the leaders of the party which is re-
sponsibe for the state administration and
present conditions.
Having obtained some evidence Of very
deep and very wide unrest and state OF dis
satisfaction, these leaders really fear that
special session Of the legislature would send
a large number of the members on mission
of atonement and repentance, with Individual
members attempting to rehabilitate them
selves in the eyes of their neighbors and
seeking salvation, politically, by doing many
things left undone and undoing many of the
thing done at the last session. That prospect
really frightens.
A special session, for example, might de-
termine that a mistake was made year ago
when the door to election frauds was left
wide open by failure to pass a registration
law
The disclosures in Lake county and the
charge that truck loads of imported voters
were used to overthrow the will of the ma
iority by fraudulent ballots might have some
effect in backing up the demand of the
women of the state for a law that would pre-
vent fraud and make honesty in elections
possible and perhaps probable.
There may be members, too, who repent
of their assassinations of the primary law
and who have discovered that the people
who sent them to make laws still cling to
the idea that they are quite as able to select
candidates for office as are the bosses who
meet in back rooms and parcel out the hon
ors on the basis Of eXpediency, servihty or
contributions.
The repeal of the primary might upset
some of the calculations of those who pride
themselves on an ability to manipulate
conventions.
There is always the danger that eventu-
ally some member may investigate the cost
of road building in the state and trace the
twenty millions of dollars now provided each
year for that purpose.
It is possible that some one may point
to the vast unemployment in the prisons
and suggest the advisability of the state
making its own road materials by the use of
state-owned resources and the state con-
trolled labor now idle in penitentiaries and
state farms That would be tragic.
The successor to Coffin as the head of the
local party last night told an audience of
manufacturers that all of the evils of which
people complain and which have given rise to
a wide demand for a new Constitution can
be cured by the legislature itself. That body,
in special session, might take him seriously.
It might even attempt to pass city man.
ager law that would get past the supreme
court, more probable since so many cities of
the state had political revolutions in Novem-
ber Governor Leslie has a magnificent OPP
portunity. The politicians have not been so
kind to him. Rumor has it that he is not on
the closest terms Of intimacy with the big
boys or the little fxers and that they have
pointed to Lafayette as his Elba at the close
of the term.
He might but probably will not, make
history by calling the lawmakers together
and tell them that the sky is the limit.
The people, when they finished, would at
least know whether they need a new Con-
stitution or can rely, as said the successor to
Coffin, upon legislative action for relief.