Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Message of Governor Jos; M. Dixon to the Seventeenth Legislative Assembly of the State of Montana: January 4, 1921
Members of the Seventeenth Legislative Assembly:
The Constitution of Montana directs the Governor, at the beginning of each legislative session, to "give to the Legislative Assembly information of the condition of the State and recommend such measures as he shall deem expedient."
In conformity with that provision, I now submit for your consideration some of the matters that I deem most urgent.
The statements as to the actual financial situation that now confronts the people of this State are made in the hope that it may awaken us from the lethargic state of mind with which we have been disposed to regard these matters.
The recommendations and suggestions that follow are not made in a perfunctory way; but with the sincere belief that they are things that this Legislature can do and ought to do for Montana.
A very large majority of the people of this State have entrusted us, temporarily, with the power and duties of their State government. I believe they are expecting more at our hands than has ordinarily been the case in this State. Upon our good or ill performance of the task entrusted depends the tenure of our stewardship.
If this Legislature will get down to business immediately, in a real spirit of public service; restrict the number of its employees to its actual needs; introduce as few bills and enact as few laws as possible; refrain from legislation in behalf of any special interest, and then adjourn, the people of Montana will rise up and call you blessed.
Montana has just passed through four of the most trying years in her history. During the great war her young men were drafted for the national army upon a population basis of 940,000, while the census returns gave us only 548,889.
We sent overseas and into the training camps about 40,000 men, nearly double the quota demanded from any other state, as related to its actual man power.
Our excess quota of war bonds was allotted on the same fictitious basis of population.
In contradistinction to these things, our interior geographical location prevented us sharing in the financial prosperity that came to communities more favorably situated to the great war industrial activities.
In addition, during these four years we experienced the greatest drouths in our whole history, which bore with heavy pressure on the unirrigated sections of the State.
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