The Rural Imbalance

Like a sharecropper's abandoned cabin, Georgia's Taliaferro County has been quietly decaying for 30 years, until little is left but the shell. When the boll weevil destroyed the cotton crops of the '20s, the young people began to pull out and head for the cities. The population dropped from 8,841 in 1920 to 6,278 in 1940 to 3,370 today. It is falling still. Says Mrs. Grace Beazley, a county health worker: "Our families are just an old man and his wife sitting on the porch together."

But dying Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver) County retains the political power it received in 1825 to send a representative to the assembly, where he and his rural counterparts can snow under the three representatives from Atlanta's Fulton County (pop. 556,326). What is more, Taliaferro County is still nourished by the state's unique and complicated unit system, which was designed in 1917 to keep political control down on the farm. In state elections, each county has an allotted number of units to give to the candidate who gets the most votes within the county. The candidate who ends up with the most county units is the winner. Tiny Taliaferro County has two units, while Fulton County has only six.

One v. 600. Taliaferro County's ludicrously disproportionate political power is a dramatic example of a problem plaguing much of the U.S. In state after state, assembly and senate are still chosen under constitutional provisions drawn decades and even generations ago, when the rural population was bigger than the urban. As a result, one rural vote in Vermont is now equal to 600 city votes in choosing a state senator; the Connecticut hamlet of Union (pop. 383) has one representative v. the two allowed the capital of Hartford; and Los Angeles County (pop. 5,979,203) can send only one man to sit in a state senate of 40 members.

Now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court is a suit brought by Tennessee city dwellers for a reapportionment of the state's antiquated election districts. In Georgia the politicians are grudgingly talking at long last about giving more power to the populous counties. But Taliaferro Countians will resist any such move. Confesses one county official: "That would mean I'd be out of a job."

The Passing Buck. Driving through the green, rolling Piedmont country of Taliaferro County, a visitor can go for miles without meeting another car. The county seat of Crawfordville (pop. 786) proudly preserves the house of Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, and the white, four-faced clock on the courthouse cupola tolls the hours in perfect time. But even at high noon, Crawfordville has a ghostly air. The stores are empty. The moviehouse closed down years ago. The town dentist and doctor have moved away. This month a towel manufacturer talked of putting new life into Crawfordville by starting a local factory that would employ 250 white women--only to find that the entire county could not supply the workers.

Says one Georgia expert on industrial development: "My guess is that unless some young buck gets his back up over the situation and takes the rest of the people along with him, Taliaferro is going to keep on going downhill." But nearly all the young bucks have headed for the city. "I love Crawfordville," says J. Paul Ellington Jr., a dry-goods dealer. "I was born a block and a half away from this store. But if the population drops anymore, there's nothing for me to do but follow the others and go."

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