Part 8

_Government._--The present constitution, which was adopted in 1877,[6] provides for a system of government similar in general to that of the other states (see UNITED STATES). The executive officials are elected for a term of two years, and the judges of the Supreme Court and of the court of appeals for six years, while those of the superior court and of the ordinaries and the justices of the peace are chosen every four years. Before 1909 all male citizens of the United States at least twenty-one years of age (except those mentioned below), who had lived in the state for one year immediately preceding an election and in the county six months, and had paid their taxes, were entitled to vote. From the suffrage and the holding of office are excluded idiots and insane persons and all those who have been convicted of treason, embezzlement, malfeasance in office, bribery or larceny, or any crime involving moral turpitude and punishable under the laws of the state by imprisonment in the penitentiary--this last disqualification, however, is removable by a pardon for the offence. Before 1909 there was no constitutional discrimination aimed against the exercise of the suffrage by the negro, but in fact the negro vote had in various ways been greatly reduced. By a constitutional amendment adopted by a large majority at a special election in October 1908, new requirements for suffrage, designed primarily to exclude negroes, especially illiterate negroes, were imposed (supplementary to the requirements mentioned above concerning age, residence and the payment of taxes), the amendment coming into effect on the 1st of January 1909: in brief this amendment requires that the voter shall have served in land or naval forces of the United States or of the Confederate States or of the state of Georgia in time of war, or be lawfully descended from some one who did so serve; or that he be a person of good character who proves to the satisfaction of the registrars of elections that he understands the duties and obligations of a citizen; or that he read correctly in English and (unless physically disabled) write any paragraph of the Federal or state constitution; or that he own 40 acres of land or property valued at $500 and assessed for taxation. After the 1st of January 1915 no one may qualify as a voter under the first or second of these clauses (the "grandfather" and "understanding" clauses); but those who shall have registered under their requirements before the 1st of January 1915 thus become voters for life.

The governor, who receives a salary of $5000, must be at least thirty years old, must at the time of his election have been a citizen of the United States for fifteen years and of the state for six years, and "shall not be eligible to re-election after the expiration of a second term, for the period of four years." In case of his "death, removal or disability," the duties of his office devolve in the first instance upon the president of the Senate, and in the second upon the speaker of the House of Representatives. The governor's power of veto extends to separate items in appropriation bills, but in every case his veto may be overridden by a two-thirds vote of the legislature. An amendment to the constitution may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of the legislature, and comes into effect on receiving a majority of the popular vote. Members of the Senate must be at least twenty-five years old, must be citizens of the United States, and must, at the time of their election, have been citizens of the state for four years, and of the senatorial district for one year; representatives must be at least twenty-one years old, and must, at the time of their election, have been citizens of the state for two years. By law, in Georgia, lobbying is a felony.

Habitual intoxication, wilful desertion for three years, cruel treatment, and conviction for an offence the commission of which involved moral turpitude and for which the offender has been sentenced to imprisonment for at least two years, are recognized as causes for divorce. All petitions for divorce must be approved by two successive juries, and a woman holds in her own name all property acquired before and after marriage. Marriage between the members of the white and negro races is prohibited by law.

As the result of the general campaign against child labour, an act was passed in 1906 providing that no child under 10 shall be employed or allowed to labour in or about any factory, under any circumstances; after the 1st of January 1907 no child under 12 shall be so employed, unless an orphan with no other means of support, or unless a widowed mother or disabled or aged father is dependent on the child's labour, in which case a certificate to the facts, holding good for one year only, is required; after the 1st of January 1908 no child under 14 shall be employed in a factory between the hours of 7 P.M. and 6 A.M.; after the same date no child under 14 shall be employed in any factory without a certificate of school attendance for 12 weeks (of which 6 weeks must be consecutive) of the preceding year; no child shall be employed without the filing of an affidavit as to age. Making a false affidavit as to age or as to other facts required by the act, and the violation of the act by any agent or representative of a factory or by any parent or guardian of a child are misdemeanours.

In 1907 a state law was passed prohibiting after the 1st of January 1908 the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors; nine-tenths of the counties of the state, under local option laws, were already "dry" at the passage of this bill. The law permits druggists to keep for sale no other form of alcoholic drink than pure alcohol; physicians prescribing alcohol must fill out a blank, specifying the patient's ailment, and certifying that alcohol is necessary; the prescription must be filled the day it is dated, must be served directly to the physician or to the patient, must not call for more than a pint, and may not be refilled.[7]

The state supports four benevolent institutions: a lunatic asylum for the whites and a similar institution for the negroes, both at Milledgeville, an institute for the deaf and dumb at Cave Spring, and an academy for the blind at Macon. There are also a number of private charitable institutions, the oldest being the Bethesda orphan asylum, near Savannah, founded by George Whitefield in 1739. The Methodist, Baptist, Roman Catholic and Protestant Episcopal Churches, and the Hebrews of the state also support homes for orphans. A penitentiary was established in 1817 at Milledgeville. In 1866 the lease system was introduced, by which the convicts were leased for a term of years to private individuals. In 1897 this was supplanted by the contract system, by which a prison commission accepted contracts for convict labour, but the prisoners were cared for by state officials. But the contract system for convicts and the peonage system (under which immigrants were held in practical slavery while they "worked out" advances made for passage-money, &c.) were still sources of much injustice. State laws made liable to prosecution for misdemeanour any contract labourer who, having received advances, failed for any but good cause to fulfil the contract; or any contract labourer who made a second contract without giving notice to his second employer of a prior and unfulfilled contract; or any employer of a labourer who had not completed the term of a prior contract. In September 1908, after an investigation which showed that many wardens had been in the pay of convict lessees and that terrible cruelty had been practised in convict camps, an extra session of the legislature practically put an end to the convict lease or contract system; the act then passed provided that after the 31st of March 1909, the date of expiration of leases in force, no convicts may be leased for more than twelve months and none may be leased at all unless there are enough convicts to supply all demands for convict labour on roads made by counties, each county to receive its _pro rata_ share on a population basis, and to satisfy all demands made by municipalities which thus secure labour for $100 per annum (per man) paid into the state treasury, and all demands made by the state prison farm and factory established by this law.

_Education._--Georgia's system of public instruction was not instituted until 1870, but as early as 1817 the legislature provided a fund for the education in the private schools of the state of children of indigent parents. The constitution of 1868 authorized "a thorough system of general education, to be for ever free to all children of the State," and in 1870 the first public school law was enacted. Education, however, has never been made compulsory. The constitution, as amended in 1905, provides that elections on the question of local school taxes for counties or for school districts may be called upon a petition signed by one-fourth of the qualified voters of the county, or district, in question; under this provision several counties and a large number of school districts are supplementing the general fund. But the principal source of the annual school revenue is a state tax; the fund derived from this tax, however, is not large enough. In 1908 the common school fund approximated $3,786,830, of which amount the state paid $2,163,200 and about $1,010,680 was raised by local taxation. In 1908 69% of the school population (79% of whites; 58% of negroes) were enrolled in the schools; in 1902 it was estimated that the negroes, 52.3% of whom (10 years of age and over) were illiterates (i.e. could not write or could neither read nor write) in 1900 (81.6% of them were illiterate in 1880), received the benefit of only about a fifth of the school fund. Of the total population, 10 years of age and over, 30.5% were illiterates in 1900--49.9% were illiterates in 1880--and as regards the whites of native birth alone, Georgia ranked ninth in illiteracy, in 1900, among the states and territories of the Union. Of the illiterates about four-fifths were negroes in 1900. In addition to the public schools, the state also supports the University of Georgia; and in 1906 $235,000 was expended for the support of higher education. In 1906-1907 eleven agricultural and mechanical arts colleges were established, one in each congressional district of the state. Of the colleges of the university, Franklin was the first state college chartered in America (1785); the Medical College of Georgia, at Augusta, was opened in 1829; the State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts was established at Athens in 1872; the North Georgia Agricultural College, at Dahlonega, was opened in 1873; the Georgia School of Technology, at Atlanta, in 1888; the Georgia Normal and Industrial College (for women), in Milledgeville, in 1899; the Georgia State Normal School, at Athens, in 1895; the Georgia State Industrial College for Coloured Youth, near Savannah, in 1890; the School of Pharmacy, at Athens, in 1903; and the School of Forestry, and the Georgia State College of Agriculture, at Athens, in 1906. Affiliated with the university, but not receiving state funds, are three preparatory schools, the South Georgia Military and Agricultural College at Thomasville, the Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural College at Milledgeville, and the West Georgia Agricultural and Mechanical College at Hamilton. Among the institutions generally grouped as denominational are--Baptist: Mercer University, at Macon (Penfield, 1837; Macon, 1871), Shorter College (1877) at Rome, Spelman Seminary (1881) in Atlanta for negro women and girls, and Bessie Tift College, formerly Monroe College (1849) for women, at Forsyth; Methodist Episcopal: Emory College (1836), at Oxford, and Wesleyan Female College (1836) at Macon, both largely endowed by George Ingraham Seney (1837-1893), and the latter one of the earliest colleges for women in the country; Methodist Episcopal Church, South: Young Harris College (1855) at Young Harris, Andrew Female College (1854) at Cuthbert, and Dalton Female College (1872) at Dalton; Presbyterian: Agnes Scott College at Decatur; and African Methodist Episcopal: Morris Brown College (1885) at Atlanta. A famous school for negroes is the non-sectarian Atlanta University (incorporated in 1867, opened in 1869), which has trained many negroes for teaching and other professions. Non-sectarian colleges for women are: Lucy Cobb Institute (1858) at Athens, Cox College (1843) at College Park, near Atlanta, and Brenau College Conservatory (1878) at Gainesville.

_Finance._--The assessed value of taxable property in 1910 was about $735,000,000. A general property tax, which furnishes about four-fifths of the public revenue, worked so inequitably that a Board of Equalization was appointed in 1901. By the Constitution the tax rate is limited to $5 on the thousand, and, as the rate of taxation has increased faster than the taxable property, the state has been forced to contract several temporary loans since 1901, none of which has exceeded $200,000, the limit for each year set by the Constitution. On the 1st of January 1910 the bonded debt was $6,944,000, mainly incurred by the extravagance of the Reconstruction administration (see _History_, below). Each year $100,000 of this debt is paid off, and there are annual appropriations for the payment of interest (about $303,260 in 1910). The state owns the Western & Atlantic railway (137 m. long) from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Atlanta, which has valuable terminal facilities in both cities, and which in 1910 was estimated to be worth $8,400,240 (more than the amount of the bonded debt); this railway the state built in 1841-1850, and in 1890 leased for 29 years, at an annual rental of $420,012, to the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis railway.

Banking in Georgia is in a prosperous condition. The largest class of depositors are the farmers, who more and more look to the banks for credit, instead of to the merchants and cotton speculators. Hence the number of banks in agricultural districts is increasing. The state treasurer is the bank examiner, and to him all banks must make a quarterly statement and submit their books for examination twice a year. The legal rate of interest is 7%, but by contract it may be 8%.

_History._--Georgia derives its name from King George II. of Great Britain. It was the last to be established of the English colonies in America. Its formation was due to a desire of the British government to protect South Carolina from invasion by the Spaniards from Florida and by the French from Louisiana, as well as to the desire of James Edward Oglethorpe (q.v.) to found a refuge for the persecuted Protestant sects and the unfortunate but worthy indigent classes of Europe. A charter was granted in 1732 to "the Trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia in America," and parliament gave L10,000 to the enterprise. The first settlement was made at Savannah in 1733 under the personal supervision of Oglethorpe. The early colonists were German Lutherans (Salzburgers), Piedmontese, Scottish Highlanders, Swiss, Portuguese Jews and Englishmen; but the main tide of immigration, from Virginia and the Carolinas, did not set in until 1752. As a bulwark against the Spanish, the colony was successful, but as an economic experiment it was a failure. The trustees desired that there should be grown in the colony wine grapes, hemp, silk and medical plants (barilla, kali, cubeb, caper, madder, &c.) for which England was dependent upon foreign countries; they required the settlers to plant mulberry trees, and forbade the sale of rum, the chief commercial staple of the colonies. They also forbade the introduction of negro slaves. Land was leased by military tenure, and until 1739 grants were made only in male tail and alienations were forbidden. The industries planned for the colony did not thrive, and as sufficient labour could not be obtained, the importation of slaves was permitted under certain conditions in 1749. About the same time the House of Commons directed the trustees to remove the prohibition on the sale of rum. In 1753 the charter of the trustees expired and Georgia became a royal province.

Under the new regime the colony was so prosperous that Sir James Wright (1716-1785), the last of the royal governors, declared Georgia to be "the most flourishing colony on the continent." The people were led to revolt against the mother country through sympathy with the other colonies rather than through any grievance of their own. The centre of revolutionary ideas was St John's Parish, settled by New Englanders (chiefly from Dorchester, Massachusetts). The Loyalist sentiment was so strong that only five of the twelve parishes sent representatives to the First Provincial Congress, which met on the 18th of January 1775, and its delegates to the Continental Congress therefore did not claim seats in that assembly. But six months later all the parishes sent representatives to another Provincial Congress which met on the 4th of July 1775. Soon afterward the royal government collapsed and the administration of the colony was assumed by a council of safety.

The war that followed was really a severe civil conflict, the Loyalist and Revolutionary parties being almost equal in numbers. In 1778 the British seized Savannah, which they held until 1782, meanwhile reviving the British civil administration, and in 1779 they captured Augusta and Sunbury; but after 1780 the Revolutionary forces were generally successful. Civil affairs also fell into confusion. In 1777 a state constitution was adopted, but two factions soon appeared in the government, led by the governor and the executive council respectively, and harmony was not secured until 1781.

Georgia's policy in the formation of the United States government was strongly national. In the constitutional convention of 1787 its delegates almost invariably gave their support to measures designed to strengthen the central government. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify (January 2, 1788), and one of the three that ratified unanimously, the Federal Constitution. But a series of conflicts between the Federal government and the state government caused a decline of this national sentiment and the growth of States Rights theories.

First of these was the friction involved in the case, before the Supreme Court of the United States, of _Chisolm_ v. _Georgia_, by which the plaintiff, one Alexander Chisolm, a citizen of South Carolina, secured judgment in 1793 against the state of Georgia (see 2 Dallas Reports 419). In protest, the Georgia House of Representatives, holding that the United States Supreme Court had no constitutional power to try suits against a sovereign state, resolved that any Federal marshal who should attempt to execute the court's decision would be "guilty of felony, and shall suffer death, without benefit of clergy, by being hanged." No effort was made to execute the decision, and in 1798 the Eleventh Amendment to the Federal Constitution was adopted, taking from Federal courts all jurisdiction over any suit brought "against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state."

The position of Congress and of the Supreme Court with reference to Georgia's policy in the Yazoo Frauds also aroused distrust of the Federal government. In 1795 the legislature granted for $500,000 the territory extending from the Alabama and Coosa rivers to the Mississippi river and between 35 deg. and 31 deg. N. lat. (almost all of the present state of Mississippi and more than half of the present state of Alabama) to four land companies, but in the following year a new legislature rescinded the contracts on the ground that they had been fraudulently and corruptly made, as was probably the case, and the rescindment was embodied in the Constitution of 1798., In the meantime the United States Senate had appointed a committee to inquire into Georgia's claim to the land in question, and as this committee pronounced that claim invalid, Congress in 1800 established a Territorial government over the region. The legislature of Georgia remonstrated but expressed a willingness to cede the land to the United States, and in 1802 the cession was ratified, it being stipulated among other things that the United States should pay to the state $1,250,000, and should extinguish "at their own expense, for the use of Georgia, as soon as the same can be peaceably obtained on reasonable terms," the Indian title to all lands within the state of Georgia. Eight years later the Supreme Court of the United States decided in the case of _Fletcher_ v. _Peck_ (6 Cranch 87) that such a rescindment as that in the new state constitution was illegal, on the ground that a state cannot pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts; and at an expense of more than four millions of dollars the Federal government ultimately extinguished all claims to the lands.

This decision greatly irritated the political leaders of Georgia, and the question of extinguishing the Indian titles, on which there had long been a disagreement, caused further and even more serious friction between the Federal and state authorities. The National government, until the administration of President Jackson, regarded the Indian tribes as sovereign nations with whom it alone had the power to treat, while Georgia held that the tribes were dependent communities with no other right to the soil than that of tenants at will. In 1785 Georgia made treaties with the Creeks by which those Indians ceded to the state their lands S. and W. of the Altamaha river and E. of the Oconee river, but after a remonstrance of one of their half-breed chiefs Congress decided that the cessions were invalid, and the National government negotiated, in 1790, a new treaty which ceded only the lands E. of the Oconee. The state appealed to the National government to endeavour to secure further cessions, but none had been made when, in 1802, the United States assumed its obligation to extinguish all Indian titles within the state. Several cessions were made between 1802 and 1824, but the state in the latter year remonstrated in vigorous terms against the dilatory manner in which the National government was discharging its obligation, and the effect of this was that in 1825 a treaty was negotiated at Indian Springs by which nearly all the Lower Creeks agreed to exchange their remaining lands in Georgia for equal territory beyond the Mississippi. But President J.Q. Adams, learning that this treaty was not approved by the entire Creek nation, authorized a new one, signed at Washington in 1826, by which the treaty of 1825 was abrogated and the Creeks kept certain lands W. of the Chattahoochee. The Georgia government, under the leadership of Governor George M. Troup (1780-1856), had proceeded to execute the first treaty, and the legislature declared the second treaty illegal and unconstitutional. In reply to a communication of President Adams early in 1827 that the United States would take strong measures to enforce its policy, Governor Troup declared that he felt it his duty to resist to the utmost any military attack which the government of the United States should think proper to make, and ordered the military companies to prepare to resist "any hostile invasion of the territory of this state." But the strain produced by these conditions was relieved by information that new negotiations had been begun for the cession of all Creek lands in Georgia. These negotiations were completed late in the year.