Loan sharks, then and today one of several Florida Legislature’s nastiest battles happened 60 years back over legislation

February 28th, 2021

Among the Florida Legislature’s nastiest struggles happened 60 years back over legislation to outlaw the salary purchasing company.

Salary purchasers had been loan sharks whom, theoretically, did not provide cash. They merely purchased the legal rights for their customers’ pay envelopes _ at discounts approximating 260 per cent interest per year.

An filibuster that is adjournment-day violent whenever a senator stooging for the wage purchasers hit Sen. Spessard Holland regarding the arms with a cane. Holland responded with terms, perhaps perhaps not fists. Salary buying, he stated, had been a “vicious racket” that maintained a “noisome lobby” into the Capitol.

The salary buyers thought they had killed the bill in the House the week before as told by House Historian Allen Morris and other sources.

It absolutely was from the calendar behind a 300-page college code bill that Rep. George Scofield of Citrus County demanded be read out, every term from it, whilst the Constitution then needed.

“this is actually the G–damndest thing we have you ever heard of,” cried one member.

Users attempted to foil Scofield by “reading” the bill in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Yiddish and, by one account, French, omitting pages that are whole they went. Although the presenter ruled that the Constitution don’t specify English, he conceded Scofield’s point that just the home’s monolingual reading clerks could read it.

“Five languages, like the profane, were utilized in a filibuster within the Florida home of Representative tonight,” composed AP correspondent Henry Wrenn. (more…)