Constitutional Convention's Tide Land Committee Draws Lobbyists

In making the committees for the constitutional convention, the leadership has acted conscientiously and intelligently with a view to balancing interests on the one hand and expediting business on the other. Of all the committees, none is perhaps more important than that to which will fall consideration of propositions affecting the tide land property of the state. It is certain that upon the capacity and integrity of this committee, and especially of its chairman, interests of the highest importance will depend. Every method known to a skilled and unscrupulous lobby will be employed to influence this committee. Everything depends upon the character of the men of whom it is composed, and especially of its chairman, who may properly be designated as the guardian of the most important property interest before the convention.

The corporation scheme is to postpone any sort of action concerning the tide lands. It has apparently been discovered that this convention cannot be managed in the interest of the corporation game, and it is feared that final action would be likely to end in permanent triumph for the public as against private and corporation interests. It is therefore desired to throw the matter over for legislative consideration to get it into a field where it may be subject to enactment at the hands of any legislature. If this should succeed, if the constitutional convention fails to do its duty by defining and declaring the permanent policy of the state in relation to tide land property, then we shall have for many years to come, if not for all time, this whole tide land question as a disturbing and corrupting influence in our state politics.