Court Opinion

ID: 9808365
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:36:05.839225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:11:56.016804
License: Public Domain

ClaRK, C. J.,
dissenting: The election was held by virtue of chapter 71, Laws 1911, and there is no suggestion of any irregularity in the petition or order for election, or the advertisement thereunder, nor that the election was not in all respects fair and the propositions submitted were not fully understood.
Section 4 of the act provides that “if a majority at said election in any township of said county” shall vote in favor of the tax to supplement the school funds it shall be levied and collected to supplement the school funds of said township. It is not denied that a majority of the registered vote in said township was cast in favor of the measure. No one can question that they voted to tax Kinston Township for better schools if the measure failed for the county. It is immaterial, therefore, that those voting for said tax for township purposes also voted to extend the measure to the county, which latter measure failed to carry. The statute expressly provides that in such case the measure shall be valid for the township.
There is no proof that any voter voted for the township measure only because he was in favor of the county tax. On the contrary, it is more probable that some voted against the township tax because they were not in favor, of the tax being extended to the entire county, for the taxable values in Kinston Township in proportion to the children therein is much greater than in the county at large, and the county measure would, have had more probably the effect to deter some from voting for the township tax. However, that is merely a surmise, and there is abso-*588Tutely no proof that any voter for the township tax was influenced either way. However that may be, the manner of submitting the measure was entirely within the discretion of the Legislature. There is no provision in the Constitution which forbids the measure to be submitted as the Legislature provided, nor which confers upon the Court the right to set it aside because it may doubt the wisdom of submitting the measure in that form.
The only other objection upon which an injunction is asked against putting in force the measure adopted by the township, under the authority of the legislative act, is that a few children in the adjoining townships may participate in the benefit of the Kinston Graded School. There is nothing in our Constitution or our laws which invalidates the result of an election in which the people of a township have voted to tax themselves for the benefit of the public schools of the township because a few children from outside may attend and be benefited by the few weeks longer term. Kinston, like all other towns, is dependent for its prosperity upon the adjacent country, and if the children of such tributary territory shall receive a little added education it does not invalidate the election and will not injure Kinston. At the most, the injunction would lie, not to set aside the election, but to prohibit those children from attending the graded school for the few additional days— if any man in Kinston can be found to sue out proceedings for that purpose.
The public policy of our State is prescribed by the General Assembly. It is not for the courts to say whether a measure adopted by the General Assembly is the wisest or best in the judgment of the Court; that is a matter for the people acting through their representatives in the General Assembly. When there has been a compliance with the provisions of the statute, and there is, as in this case, no express provision of the Constitution forbidding such action, the question of its wisdom or the soundness of the public policy is not for consideration by the courts.
Ninety years ago this State, under the leadership of Judge A. D. Murphy and William A. Graham, began the policy of establishing public schools for the education of that large part of our people who were not able to send their children to private' schools. Against the persistent opposition of those who were unwilling to be taxed “for the benefit of other people’s children,” as they styled it, the schools made slow headway. The Constitution of 1868 took a step forward by requiring a “four-months school” term, but the requirement was not fully carried out in the face of the reactionary opposition. A few years ago, under the leadership of Alderman, Ayeock, Joyner, and Mclver, more progressive legislation was enacted, most especially in favor of allowing *589townships and other localities to vote additional taxes for better education. Tinder one of these acts the present election was held, and it-would seem that technical objection should not be allowed to vitiate the will of the people of Kinston Township duly and regularly expressed at the ballot box.
Notwithstanding all that has been done by the friends of education, North Carolina and New Mexico stand at the foot of the list of forty-eight States in the percentage of illiteracy and in the shortness of school terms. That this does not command the approval of our people who are more progressive is shown by the fact that in the recent election, by more than one hundred thousand majority, an amendment to the Constitution was ratified to require “six-months schooling” for the children of the State.
The public policy of the State as declared by the people through their Legislature has always been more abreast with the spirit of the age than the opposition will admit. The Legislature has adopted prohibition and measures for better schools with, longer terms, for good roads, for stock laws, for drainage and other progressive measures. At every step each of these measures has been met with objections from those who are opposed to modern methods and to the more general extension of the benefits of government to all the people. Whether this shall be done or not is a matter for the people themselves, who can express their wishes only through their chosen representatives in the law-making branch of the government.
The people of Kinston Township having by the requisite vote at an election .held under the provisions of an act of the Legislature voted to tax themselves to lengthen their school terms and to extend their school facilities, it would seem that the courts ought not to interfere by injunction and forbid them to do so upon the allegation, without any proof possible, that a majority of the vote would not have been in favor of township taxation, if the Legislature had seen fit to provide that the proposition for county aid should be submitted on a separate ticket. Whether this should have been done or not was a matter for the Legislature, and not for the judgment of the courts. Nor should the fact that a few children outside of Kinston might enjoy the benefit of a few days extra schooling by paying for it — which is already the case in Raleigh, Charlotte, and probably every other town in the State — -be held so vital a defect as to defeat the additional education which the people of Kinston have voted to tax themselves to give to their own children. If the additional education to the few children from outside the township who may attend the Kinston school is a serious wrong, even if they pay for it. (of which Kinston should be relieved), this can be righted by an injunction against such children attending beyond the *590time which they would have attended but for this extension — rather by setting aside and invalidating the benefits of the measure which the people of Kinston Township have voted for their own children attending their school.
This is a “government of the people, for the people and by the people,” and when the people of Kinston, with their usual intelligence, have voted to tax themselves for longer.school terms it is because they have deemed it wise and to their best interests. Of this they are the best judges. Their action should not be set aside because some other manner of submitting the question may be deemed more ideally and logically perfect.
The Constitution is a plain, practical instrument drawn up. by the men who sat in the Convention of 1868, with some amendments since. It has no cryptic, occult or esoteric meaning. It was intended to be easily understood by all men. There is nothing to be found in it which forbids the Legislature to submit this proposition to the voters exactly in the terms in which it was submitted in this statute, nor is there any doubt that the intelligent voters of Kinston Township understood the meaning of the act, and that they voted according to their wishes. Under the authority of the statute they have cast their ballots for better schools for their children and longer terms, and this expression of their will should not be lightly set aside. If there is a constitutional provision which the Legislature and the people of that township have violated it has not been pointed out.
The manner of submitting the vote so as to apply to the county, or to one or more townships, as the popular will may determine, has been sustained in almost exactly similar cases by Hoke, J., in Keith v. Lockhart, 171 N. C., 451, and by Brown, J., in Briggs v. Raleigh, 166 N. C., 149, and cases therein cited. The fact that eighteen or twenty children in adjoining townships might enjoy the benefit of the longer term in Kinston Township cannot only be met by the parents of such children arranging to pay for the extra time, as is already done in several cases, but the township and the school district can be made coterminous by the County Board of Education, which can change the lines of the district at any time. Indeed this objection scarcely needs serious consideration.
Chapter 71, Laws 1911, under which this election was held, is not a local act recently passed for the benefit of Lenoir County, but it is a State-wide optional statute adopted nearly eight years ago, under which Wilson, New Hanover, and Beaufort, and probably other counties, and in Washington County the township of Plymouth, and townships in other counties have increased the length of their school term in accordance with an ever-growing public opinion in that direction. ' Section 5 thereof *591has no sinister or mischievous purpose. It simply provides that any unit, whether county or township, adopting the increased appropriation for its public schools may subsequently reduce the amount back to not less than the original sum by application of the board of trustees or school committee thereof to the county commissioners to abate said special tax. The object of .this is simply that if it is found that the special tax provides more funds than is required for any year, no more of it.shall be collected than is found to be necessary. This is wise and businesslike, not mischievous, and cannot possibly affect or concern any one except the county or township which, on its own application, is thus permitted by the county commissioners to reduce the special tax it has voted for its schools.