Voters in Georgia, and those of thirty-six other states this year, will elect or re-elect a governor. Article V of the 1983 Georgia Constitution states he shall assume "...the executive powers of the state." How and to what ends he exercises those 'powers' can make a difference.
In a recent speech, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi affirmed this political truth when he declared, "Governors matter." A case in point is the administration of Georgia Governor Ellis Gibbs Arnall, 1943-47. As one of the most effective in modern history and a polestar of excellence in government, it had a positive impact on the state. On today's stage of turmoil, doubt, and distrust, this Governor's forward-looking politics merit reconsideration.
He grew up in Newnan, the son of prominent Georgia citizens. After graduating from the University of Georgia law school in 1931, he plunged into politics and rose rapidly. In 1932, he won election to the Georgia House. Six years later and youngest in the country, he was serving as Attorney General. Bright, urbane, perceptive, widely read, ambitious, Arnall knew an issue when he saw one. Governor Eugene Talmadge (seeking re-election) served up one cooked to order.
Talmadge, "The Wild Man from Sugar Creek," defender of the status quo, adversary of the New Deal, disciple of rural interests, was a firebrand segregationist. Convinced integration sentiment was infiltrating the university system, he moved against professors and administrators at the University of Georgia and Georgia Teachers College, firing some and threatening others.
His mischief misfired. The University lost its accreditation. As their diplomas became worthless, students demonstrated en masse and burned the Governor in effigy at the state capitol. Across Georgia the vox populi echoed the protest.
Arnall denounced Talmadge as a dictator and demagogue. He made academic freedom his central issue in the 1942 gubernatorial election, handily defeating Talmadge to become the 69th Governor. On January 12, 1943, he took the oath of office as the youngest governor in America, age 35.
With decency and dignity, Arnall promptly obliterated Talmadge's "Tobacco Road" image, one many believed stained and degraded Georgia. That was the beginning. Other measures followed one after the other.
The Governor launched a ten-point reform program, and the legislature supported it. With university accreditation restored forthwith, Georgia became first in the nation to lower the voting age to 18. Her sons were fighting World War II battles all over the globe. "If they're old enough to fight, they're old enough to vote," Arnall declared. The citizenry agreed. He repealed the onerous poll tax that expanded the electorate by an estimated 500,000. He established a civil service system that protected state employees from arbitrary political firings. Iron shackles were banished from the penal chain gang system; one Zell Miller observed, "Had given the state a national black eye for years."
Utilizing the commission system rather than calling a convention, the Arnall administration adopted a new constitution, the first since 1877. In a break with precedent, its provisions ascribed independence to the Boards of Regents and Pardons and Paroles. Meanwhile, the administration discharged the $36 million state debt without raising taxes.
The Governor placed on his agenda another long-standing plea for relief. For years shippers, manufacturers, and business people complained that discriminatory freight rates stunted growth and business expansion, among smaller enterprises in particular. Freight rates on southern rail lines averaged thirty-nine per cent higher on manufactured goods than rates in the North. In Washington, D.C., a languid Interstate Commerce Commission continued its mull of the rate question, pending in one form or another since 1936.
Unfair rates affected other southern states, but their governors also skirted the issue. Arnall abandoned patience. He and Attorney General T. Grady Head, in brilliant fashion, drafted a bill of complaint and filed it directly in the U.S.Supreme Court. Styled, State of Georgia vs. The Pennsylvania Railroad, it named as party defendants nineteen additional northern lines. Georgia sought to enjoin them from conspiring to fix unfair freight rates in violation of the anti-trust laws.
Arnall himself argued the case in the Supreme Court, the first sitting governor to do so. On March 26, 1945, five of the nine Justices found in his favor. Among other things, the Court held Georgia averred legitimate grounds for legal remedy. A segment from the majority opinion reads:
Discriminatory rates are but one form of trade barriers. They may cause blight no less serious than the spread of noxious gas... They may affect the prosperity and welfare of a State... They may... impede old industries and prevent the establishment of new ones. They may put [a State] at a decided disadvantage in competitive markets.
The lawsuit aroused the lethargic ICC. In a matter of weeks, it issued a three hundred-page opinion that mainly agreed with the allegations of unfairness. Over time, rates were duly adjusted to assure parity and equity. As predicted, in Georgia and throughout the region the regulations contributed to business growth and industrialization.
The everlasting question facing any governor is the one (as Edmund Burke expressed it) of knowing "...what the state ought to take upon itself to direct by public wisdom, and what it ought to leave with as little interference as possible, to individual discretion." Ellis Arnall understood Burke's maxim. He also knew nobility of cause is admirable and promises can brighten the heart, but for the electorate the only effective measuring stick is constructive action-in those matters the state 'ought to take upon itself.'
April 29, 2010
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