The Georgia outlaw of whom I have been writing borrowed $25,000 from his Cotton Factors, and financed the convention until the Constitution was finished.
On two occasions only was this Outlaw ever seen to weep in public—once when the Constitutional Convention of Georgia thanked him for his princely generosity, and once when he stood at the coffin of Alexander H. Stephens to deliver the memorial address.
In the new Constitution of Georgia the Outlaw believed he had embodied three grand provisions:
(1) He had made the looting of the treasury a difficult job.
(2) He had established a system of public schools to educate at public expense the children of the poor as well as the rich.
(3) He had put a curb on corporation tyranny; made it illegal for competitive lines of railways to combine, and had created a commission to regulate and control the transportation companies.
This was the Georgia Outlaw’s proudest work. He exulted over it; he regarded it as his monument: he relied on it to benefit his people for generations to come.
In this belief he lived out the remnant of his days, and in this belief he died.
Where are now the competing railroads in Georgia?
We have none. Mergers, leases, allied interests have swallowed them all. Monopoly rules from border to border. Constitutional provisions are dead letters.