Hummon's Own Assembly

Georgia's legislature snuffled and snapped through its appointed rounds. It really sat up when the word was passed that "Hummon wants this." In just 41 of the 70 days allotted to it, the state's complacent assembly gave crafty, cocky Governor Herman Eugene Talmadge almost everything he wanted. Grumped an editorialist last week in the Hummon-hating Atlanta Journal: "Thank Heaven, I still have my liver and lights." The Atlanta Constitution, somewhat friendlier to Hummon, drew a deep breath and said: "On the whole the legislature did a good job."

He Got What He Wanted. But had it? Like his daddy, the late, loud Gene, who purposefully played the peckerwood, Hummon stood for 1) keeping "the Nigras" in their place, 2) keeping the wool-hat back-country control over the shoe-wearing big-city majority, 3) perpetuating in office the Talmadge dynasty, its heirs and assigns. That's what he wanted and that's what he got.

As an up-to-the-minute, 1949 model of the old Southern political boss, Hummon had shown a marked talent for exploiting credulity, prejudice and ignorance without all of the stage props which old Gene needed. Once in office he snapped no red galluses. He was as subdued as a Talmadge could be. He steered an endless stream of visitors in & out of his crowded office with an efficiency that Tom Dewey could admire, greeting visitors with a fast-fading smile.

There were some things to be said for Hummon's own first legislature. It had finally discovered and approved the principle of the secret ballot (only South Carolina still held out against it). It had passed a law requiring blood tests before marriage and it had approved a program to raise the depressed level of education in Georgia (the paid lobbyist for more education was Hummon's chief crony, ex-Speaker Roy Harris).

But it had killed a bill to take the pillowcase off the face of the Ku Klux Klan. It had extended civil service protection to a number of state boards, all of them manned now by Talmadge men. It had left juicy highway contracts to be farmed out by the governor and kept home rule from the cities.

Also rammed through was a re-registration bill, the net effect of which would be to disfranchise more Negroes, cut down voters' lists and make elections easier to swing. To supplement this, Hummon's boys extended the county-unit voting system to general elections, subject to approval of the voters in 1950. The unit-voting system makes it possible for Hummon's beloved piney-woods counties to outvote their city neighbors.

Take Your Pick. And lastly, it passed two pieces of legislation which would allow Hummon to succeed himself. With this and the unit-voting extension, Hummon could take his pick: he could either continue as governor or take his political ambitions to the U.S. Senate; some said he was narrowing his eyes speculatively at Georgia's senior Senator Walter George, whose term is up in 1951.

There were some Georgians who still insisted that Hummon might prove to be a better governor than his father before him. It was an extremely modest and narrow ambition, but no one yet knew whether Hummon aspired to it.

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