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Show f be ' OESCC D"" From The Italy News-Herald, Italy, Texas: A number of years ago this writer served for a time as justice of the peace. At that time we reached the conclusion that many people were pleading guilty to traffic law violations and paying fines unnecessarily. The general attitude appeared to prevail pre-vail that it was useless to try to defend oneself against an arresting arrest-ing officer's charges and that the best way out was to pay the fine and forget it. When time was taken tak-en to prepare a defense the arrested ar-rested person was often held not guilty. Apparently we were not alone in this line of thinking. It Is now being argued that since conviction convic-tion for traffic law violations will affect automobile insurance rates, new courts will have to be set up to handle the cases because motorists will be less likely to plead guilty and accept a judgment judg-ment of guilty without a contest. It would seem logical to assume as we have done all along that threat of higher insurance in-surance rates will improve driving driv-ing habits and result in fewer arrests. If this is true and the authorities still anticipate an increase in-crease in contested cases, then it can only be concluded that thousands of motorists have been victimized by traffic courts. The extent of this cannot be determined, de-termined, of course, until study can be made of the contested cases' expected to arise after the new regulations go into effect and the percentage of convictions definitely known. To our way of thinking this is another argument for the new insurance in-surance regulations. If motorists, arresting officers and judges can be made to realize that n person must be presumed to be innocent inno-cent until proven guilty in traffic traf-fic court as well as any other, then justice will be served. There has been entirely too much thinking think-ing that the handing out of a traffic citation is prima facie evidence of guilt. From The C'hlt-kasha Star, Chickasha, Okla.: Whether one realizes it or not, advertising is perhaps the most wonderful development de-velopment of the modern commercial com-mercial age. It is the maker or breaker of business, big or little. It is the one factor of successful sales that is most apt to be overlooked over-looked by the merchants and businessmen of small towns and cities. Advertising is . . . the power that will make little concerns con-cerns grow into larger success. It is a science that requires study and be it said, character. |