there will be drafts upon it. You are to consider the new organic law and its relation to previous statutes with the purpose of bringing the latter into harmony. The task at first seems to be a larger one than may be completed in the time you have at your disposal. Let us hope, however, that when the work is properly divided among competent committees, the difficulties will grow less serious and will adjust themselves.

The matter of the prohibited local legislation, except as to several subjects, will not make overwhelming drafts upon your wisdom or your time. Many of the subjects about which you may not locally legislate have already been provided for in the statutes, not fully perhaps but largely. A few of the prohibited subjects are of such a nature that while there is no statute now to govern, there need be none. That is to say, the constitutional prohibition should remain.

Of the new statutes growing out of the thirty-one local subjects about which you shall legislate only in a general way, only two or three are likely to give you great concern. The subject which you will find the most serious will be the one which prohibits any special law incorporating a city, town or village. Your duty requires you to pass a comprehensive statute providing a plan under which towns of any size may be incorporated with privileges dependent upon its size and needs. To formulate such a law will tax the capacity of your wisest members.

We have come to honest elections in this State. Whatever may have been said in condemnation or justification of frauds heretofore, there is no further occasion for anything short of absolute honesty in both the primary and the election. The man hereafter who shall sin thus is entitled to and must receive the strongest condemnation of our penal statutes and the scorn of our citizenship. We must cleanse our garments. In this connection, you will be called upon to provide a more nearly perfect primary law than the one we have and a statute looking to registration under the permanent plan of the new Constitution. The very letter of the law should control in the registration under the permanent plan.

The Sayre election law ought to be repealed and the new statute should provide for representation at the polls of two or more political parties, looking to the impossibility of election frauds.

REDISTRICTING THE STATE.

The duty will devolve upon you of redistricting the State. The judicial districts, as at present constituted, are open to serious criticism. One or more of the judges have all they can do and are even overworked, while in some of the districts there are only left two or three counties. There are a sufficient number of judges and solicitors, after killing a dozen county courts, to do the work of the State. The labor ought, however, to be more equitably divided. In this connection, it might not be amiss to say that in some of the largest districts, the traveling expenses materially reduces the net income of the officer, and particularly is this true in the case of the supernumerary judge and the chancellors.

THE STATE'S FINANCES.

There was in the treasury at the beginning of the fiscal year 1900, $629,691.44, and, two years later, October 1, 1902, $729,351.86. In the two years, the condition of the State's finances had improved by the amount of $100,000. On the first day of January, I caused the cash to be counted in the presence of the Secretary of State, furnishing Examiner George F. Sedberry for the purpose. There was on hand than day $472.569.48, of which amount $80,239.92 belonged to the interest account and was subject to the payment of coupons past due. leaving an available balance of $392.329.56. There was no outstanding obligations against this sum. On the first day of January two years ago, there was on hand, $424,930.90, against which there were several claims. The condition of the treasury has improved on the whole in the two years but only to an inconsiderable extert. If the disbursements of the two years had been held down by the Legislature of that time to an amount equal to the disbursements of any two previous years, there would have been on hand on the first day of last January,

something like $1,800,000, for I find that the disbursements of the last two years over those of two years before, or any two other years, were more than $1,400,000. Here are the disbursements taken from the Auditor's report, for the past seven years:

While we had on hand $392,329.56 on the first day of this year, the balance did run down in November to a little above two hundred thousand, and in November, 1901, there was a day when the balance was much below one hundred thousand dollars. The figures warn us that the burden put upon the treasury has been about all that it could reasonably bear. The excess of receipts over disbursements (see last Auditor's Report) was $78,281.72 for two years. Instead, then, of preparing additional burdens for the treasury, you must arrange in some way to decrease them.

This will be necessary, because the new Constitution requires you to reduce the tax rate to 65 cents on the hundred dollars. The same instrument requires that a sum which may be raised by three mills of this shall go to the public schools. You have been giving under the statute one mill for old soldiers. If you repeat this last provision, there will be left only 25 cents on the hundred dollars for all other purposes.

With three mills for schools and one mill for the old soldiers, you can consider only the claims which will be charged against the 25 cents on the hundred dollars. The total assessed property for the year 1900 was $266,893,288; for the year 1901, $284,622,937; and for the year 1902, $296,135,540. It is fortunate for the State that the assessments have so grown in the two years, otherwise the provision of a legislative enactment of two years ago, providing for a pro rata pavment only on appropriations, in case of necessity, would possibly have been invoked to meet the extraordinary disbursements of the two years. A study of the Auditor's report for nast

1

years will show that there was paid out of the treasury an average of something over thirty per cent more money in each of the past two years than has been disbursed in a generation. The laws that provided for these disbursements were unwise in that they were likely to embarrass the State. Fortunately the country prospered, the assessments were insisted upon and grew by the extraordinary amount of $29,242,252. It will not be wise, however, for you to calculate on so great an assessment through the next four years. We must recall that from 1892 to 1895, the State's assessment ran down from two hundred and sixty-one million to two hundred and fortyone million, and a like falling off is probable during the next four years.

It is fair to assume that the assessment sheets for four years will show an average of two hundred and eighty million dollars and you can afford to calculate on about that amount from which to get your direct taxes. In addition to this source of revenue, there came in the last fiscal year, $247,000 from license tax. A new revenue code, which the Constitution requires the Governor, Auditor and Attorney General to prepare and submit to you, if passed as prepared, will raise an amount as large. You will have too, to dispose of about one hundred thousand dollars a year from the hire of convicts, and about one-half as much from the office of the Insurance Commissioner. The net income from the Commissioner of Agriculture's office will be wiped out with any reduction in the tag tax and how much of a charge that department will become to the State will depend upon the treatment you accord that tax.

The license tax will depend upon the adoption of a revenue Code.

The direct tax income, then, exclusive of the

school and old soldier specials, it will be safe to calculate at two and one-half mills on 280 millions, will be ...

The proposed Code will raise, say

Convicts, put safely at ...

From the Insurance Department

From the Agricultural Fund we can calculate

on nothing

$700,000

$ 225.000

$ 100,000

$ 50,000

000

The total receipts for general purposes may

be something more than

$1,075,000 The reports of the Auditor and Treasurer will show you the various interests which prey upon this fund. The most notable is the interest on the bonded debt, now $449,000, and the hospital at Tuscaloosa, and the schools at Talladega, together, taking considerably over two hundred thousand dollars.

We were fortunate in getting through the past two years without disaster. The demands upon the treasury were the most notable in the State's history. So apprehensive were the law-makers that they, in the last days of the last session, passed an act providing that if a lack of money appeared quite probable the several appropriations were to be diminished in proportion to their interests to meet any exigency of the treasury. This law was not invoked. The assessments grew handsomely under an insistent administration and the revenues were so carefully husbanded that we find the treasury after the two years, in a somewhat stronger position. The receipts (see last Auditor's report, page 20) were for the two years, $5,751,150.01, and the disbursements (see same page) were $5,671,868.29, leaving a net balance of receipts over disbursements of $78,281.72.

BONDED DEBT.

The present bonded debt of the State amounts to $9,357,600, divided as follows:

Class A, due 1906, $6,859,600, bear 5 per cent.

Class B, due 1906,

Class C, due 1906,

Seay bonds, due 1920,

578,000, bear 5 per cent.

966,000, bear 4 per cent.

954,000, bear 4 per cent.

The General Assembly has several times in late years provided for refunding this bonded indebtedness, and the Constitution makers in latest organic law, apprehensive that the bonds could not be most effectually sold under the legislative act, provided as follows:

"283. The act of the General Assembly of Alabama, entitled 'An Act to consolidate and adjust the bonded debt of the State of Alabama,' approved February 18, 1895, and an act amendatory thereof, entitled 'An Act to amend Section 6 of an act to consolidate and adjust