MISSISSIPPI: Home Is a Home

Having been elected Governor of Mississippi two years ago on a novel platform —to keep the late Huey Long from annexing that State to his domain—millionaire Lumberman Hugh White has since ably maintained his reputation for originality. When a reporter once asked him about his favorite hobby, the 250-lb. Governor shyly replied: “A lot of fellows think I’m kidding when I say it … but what I would rather do than anything else is to sit on the fence and listen to a little pig three months old crack corn. That’s fun.”

Fun it was for Governor White last week to do something that to other Depression-ridden Governors sounded like pure quixotry. Thanks to plentiful Federal grants for public works and a 2% sales tax inherited from his budget-balancing predecessor, Sennett (“Mike”) Conners, Governor White boasts a $5,000.000 surplus in his State treasury. All homesteads valued at less than $2,500 are currently exempt from State taxes. In his opening message to the legislature last week, Governor White expressed the pious hope that all homesteads be exempted, not only from the four-mill State tax but from the 15 to 7O-mill taxes levied by town & county governments. Without specifying exactly how this was to be done or recommending any substitute taxes to make up an estimated $7,500,000 loss in revenue, Governor White declared: “The home is a home, whether it be occupied by a man of wealth or by a man who must earn his daily bread by his daily toil. . . . An amendment to the constitution may be necessary . . . but if so, I think there is no question whatever that our people would overwhelmingly ratify such an amendment at the polls.”

Flabbergasted, the legislature applauded long & loud.