The Marietta Journal

THE CONVENTION AGAIN.
We stated in our last issue that a fair and just apportionment of the delegation for the 35th Senatorial District in the approaching Constitutional Convention would be five delegates from Fulton, three from Cobb, and one from Clayton. The Atlanta Constitution joins issue with us and claims six delegates for Fulton and bases its claims upon the population as given by the census tables of 1870. Every intelligent person knows that the census that was not fairly taken.
We, in claiming three delegates for Cobb, do not base our calculation upon any such false statistics.
A better criterion is the last Presidential election. The total vote of Fulton county last November was 6,518. The total vote of Cobb, at the same election, was 3,209.
Counting five of population as represented by one voter—the usual computation—would make the population of Fulton but little over double that of Cobb. Therefore she should have but little over double the number of delegates to the Convention. She claims, through the Constitution, three times as many delegates as she is willing to concede to Cobb. If our contemporary will recur to his own tables, as taken from the census, he will see that Fulton ought to have 41,439 of population to entitle her to a delegation three times as large as that conceded to Cobb—whereas Fulton has only 33,446 of population—lacking 7,993 only! of the number sufficient to authorize her claim to six delegates.
We repeat that a fair and just apportionment would give five to Fulton, three to Cobb and one to Clayton. Fulton's representation in the House of Representatives is three; Cobb's representation is two members. Will Fulton insist on having six members in the House and on giving Cobb two, when the convention assembles? She could do so with as much propriety as she now evinces in claiming six delegates to the convention.