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Show TAXATION. There are some persona who fear that their taxes will be increased by the advent of statehood, and are in doubt w hether it is prudent in a financial finan-cial sense to vote for the constitution. To such we have a few words to say. In the first place should we remain a territory, we must either abolish our free school system, abandon our public pub-lic institutions, increase our bonded indebtedness, or increase the rate of taxation. The last legislature left the territory terri-tory in a wretched financial condition. It entirely failed to meet the situation. Having a desire to do something in the way of bounties it proposed to re-dace re-dace the amount to be used for education, educa-tion, so pb to be able to give a bounty on canaigre root, but failed. It appropriated ap-propriated warrants for the public institutions, in-stitutions, but failed to provide any way to redeem the warrants. It dared not either provide for issuing bonds, or increase the rate of taxation and make any show of carrying out the republican re-publican theory of bounties, hence it indulged in a discussion of the bounty question, made extremely limited appropriations ap-propriations for the public institutions, but made no arrangements for money to pay those appropriations, and at the end of this year the territory will be in debt very near one million of dollars; and if the territorial government had "tie8hadTemained an issue we would have been in a very bad fix financially. No way out exc3pt to increase taxation or to close some of our public institutions. institu-tions. We think the public ought to know the truth. Take the insane asylum for example, $75,000.00 was appropriated appro-priated to run it for two years, the warrants have been issued quarterly but not one dollar paid on the warrants war-rants yet, and no prospect of any being paid out of the present year's taxes. But the institution must run; its 220 inmates cannot be turned loose to destroy the property and endanger the lives of everybody, and the next legislature must provide the money . . somehow. i If we had not got statehood we must y have raised the rate of taxation, and improved our system of finance or rather we will say created a system of finance. An expose of our present financial lack of system, will show a deplorable inefficiency in our legislature, legisla-ture, but that is not our present purpose. pur-pose. We want to deal with the condition as it exists, Frudent, economic legis- lation will induce a wiae use of the grants of land made to the new sate so that public schools and other public institutions will not draw so largely from taxation for their maintenance, thus having more musev for the In-Creased In-Creased expenses of 'he suite. It is probable that the rate of taxation tax-ation will be increased, but there is no need tl.nt it should be any higher than it would have to be if Utah had re ruained a territory. The main difference differ-ence is, the stale will have lands to use, when the territory had nothirg but taxation to depend upon; vb will have a little more to do and a great deal more to do it with. We will be far better off haying all the grants we have got from the United 'States on the one hand, and the increased expense of state go, eminent on tae other, than if we bad reaiained a territory without the giants given to the sate, What we need is to b; very careful in the selection of our s'ate legislature. It is time we were thinking about who we will elect to grapple with the situation. situ-ation. When people begin to think about this seriously they will Eee that the selection of John T. Caine who ia now auditor and knows the condition condi-tion of our finances for governor is a stroke of far sighted financial policy, and that the electi.-u ol conservative men to the legislature will be true statesmarjs hip. |