Olympia Wakes Up: Subpoenas, Telegraph Rates and a Suffrage Amendment

OLYMPIA, Feb. 5.—Special.—This has been the first day of this session of the legislature on which work was entered into with real earnestness. Both the senate and house took up the business of the calendar and disposed of it in a most businesslike manner. Then an adjournment was taken until tomorrow morning to allow sufficient time for needed work in committee rooms. It now looks very much as if the session will be extremely active in legislative work. Every one seems to breathe with relief now that the political strife has been removed, and there is nothing to do but work for needed legislation.

S. B. No. 18, to clothe legislative committees with authority to conduct investigations and send for persons and papers, passed the upper house today. This is considered important, in view of the numerous investigations promised in the near future. The senate judiciary committee was requested to prepare a comprehensive bill for the government of state institutions.

Senator Van Houten introduced a bill to compel telegraph companies doing business in this state to reduce their present schedule of charges for service 40 per cent. It provided that hereafter it should be unlawful for any person or corporation owning or operating a telegraphic line or lines in this state to charge for the transmission and delivery of telegraphic messages between points wholly within the state a greater rate than 60 per cent of the rate established and maintained for said service on January 1, 1895. Companies were to file their schedules with the secretary of state, and persons injured by refusal or overcharge could sue for damages and attorney's fees. The bill carried an emergency clause.

A measure of especial importance to both Washington and Oregon was the bill prepared by Senator Shaw, relating to the fishing industries of the Columbia river. It made it unlawful to fish with a gill net over 150 fathoms long and 30 meshes deep in the Columbia or any other river within the state of Washington, and fixed a penalty for fishing within five miles of the Columbia river bar. Senator Shaw cited a report by Maj. W. A. Jones of the United States engineers showing that as far back as 1888 the gill nets operating about the mouth of the Columbia totaled about 645 miles in length, making it almost impossible for salmon to escape and ascend the upper river for propagation.

Senator Hutchinson received a petition, thirty or forty feet in length, from Lincoln county constituents demanding a law reducing freights within the state on farm products in car lots per ton per mile, with no more than $3 per ton charged between any points within the state boundary.

The present law was specific in prohibiting prize fighting or sparring matches, and the penalty extended even to those who aided or abetted such contests. It exempted, however, members of private clubs who sparred or fenced for exercise among themselves. Senator Belknap believed the exception too liberal and introduced a measure making it a misdemeanor for an athletic or any other club to conduct such fighting, sparring or fencing.

In the house this morning a petition containing 400 names was presented by Barge of Kittitas, advocating an amendment to the constitution favoring equal suffrage. Gibson of Asotin presented a petition signed by 150 constituents praying that the legislature reimburse Hugh Barclay for fifteen head of horses recently killed by order of the state veterinary surgeon.

A bill to amend the system of drawing grand and petit jurors consumed more than an hour in discussion. As amended and passed, it directed a board composed of the sheriff, auditor and clerk, in the presence of a judge of the superior court, to draw the jurors, taking the duty out of the hands of the county commissioners. It provided that jurors be drawn in February of each year, and that a juror could serve but once during the year—claimed to do away with professional jurors. An emergency clause passed.

Among new bills introduced were S. B. No. 139, by Taylor of Pierce, providing for a constitutional amendment conferring the elective franchise on women; S. B. No. 147, by Donahoe of Lewis, to provide for the survey and appraisal of tide lands; S. B. No. 152, by Belknap, to prohibit prize fighting; and S. B. No. 154, by Sergeant, for the creation of a railroad commission and the regulation of common carriers.