Fields' 1924 address to the General Assembly included several ambitious proposals, including the founding of a trade school for blacks at Paducah, planning and developing normal schools at Murray and Morehead, raising the gasoline tax to three cents per gallon, and the issuance of $75 million in state bonds to finance a state highway system. A dissenting faction of the Democratic party, led by former governor J. C. W. Beckham, political boss Percy Haly, and Louisville Courier-Journal publisher Robert Worth Bingham, voiced strong opposition to Fields' proposals, especially the bond issue. They charged that Fields had the support of a dangerous "bipartisan combine", with the Republican element of the combine led by Maurice Galvin.
