It has been quite a year in Georgia. The old forms were broken. The state voted for the Republican presidential candidate in November for the first time in its history.
There were other signs and portents. Industrialization and urbanization continued. Agriculture continued to prosper, too, but fewer people made more money at it.
The old tenant farmers have about disappeared. The small, independent farmer is still with us. But he is better off if he has a job in town as well as his farm.
People who used to complain about the lack of paved roads now complain because all roads are not four-lane roads.
This is as good a measure of our tangible progress as any, this and electric power and running water in the most remote homes of the most remote areas. Georgia has changed enormously in the last three decades. It has been a slow and gradual change for the most part.
But this year the results of that change were very obvious. We have a new look in politicians, even. The successful ones no longer find it necessary to try and hide the fact they are educated and financially well off.
Except for lapses on the race problem, it now seems likely that the politician who wants to go forward may be more successful than the one who wants to go back.
That, friends, is progress.
There are other signs. Among them is the feeling among the taxpayers that the highway department might be run for their benefit. Now? It is run for the benefit of the politicians. This department has been the handiest instrument ever for enforcing a governor’s will through road grants, or aiding in the election of friendly people.
There most likely always will be politics in highways. But with the shift in population and voting loyalties, we may see a day where funds are distributed more on a basis of need rather than political loyalties.
There is similar progress in education. Education? It is that process by which we are supposed to equip our children to lead better lives. Among the incidental benefits will be a richer and happier state.
But alas. Education has been overly tainted with politics. There have been local boards which spent every cent they could get from the state (pretty much as they pleased, too) and did not squeeze the local people for their fair share.
This is forward looking? Indeed it isn’t. This kind of cheating your own children is at the bottom of a lot of troubles. This is why communities shrivel and die. This is why opportunities bloom, not at home but elsewhere where the schools and other public services are not cheated.
This year may have seen the end of this. The General Assembly passed a law requiring fair contributions on the local level. The penalty? A cutoff of state funds if the local people try to cheat.
So here we go. The year has seen a lot of changes, on paper at least, and a sort of solidifying of public opinion.
The public may have decided that it has been cheated long enough, and politicians ought to be their servants and not their masters.
That is the way the signs read now. But signs can be misleading.
Just what the public has decided won’t be fully known for a while.
There are signs, though, that these statesmanlike advances of this and recent years may be attacked in the General Assembly.
There is hostility against reforms in the financing of education for instance.
There is hostility against reforms in methods of spending and allocating highway money.
There is hostility against a measure to remove unsafe, death dealing, mechanically defective autos from the public roads.
By and large there seems to be hostility on the part of some politicians against an informed and interested public.
And why not? With a sufficiently informed and interested public the way of life of these politicians is at stake.
