Island are citizens of the state. Under an act of 1724 the suffrage was restricted to adult males who possessed a freehold of the value of $134 (see History). So far as state and national elections are concerned, the privilege was extended to native non-freeholders by the constitution of 1842, to naturalized foreigners who had served in the Civil War by an amendment of the 7th of April 1886, and to all adult male citizens by the amendment of the 4th of April 1888. A curious survival of the old system exists in the provision that only those who pay taxes on $134 worth of property may vote for members of city councils or on propositions to levy taxes or to expend public money. The working men are thus almost entirely excluded from participating in the government of the large factory towns.
Amendments to the constitution must be passed by both houses of the General Assembly at two consecutive sessions, and must then be ratified by three-fifths of the electors of the state present and voting thereon in town and ward meetings. Fifteen amendments have thus been added to the constitution of 1842. An amendment of the 7th of April 1886 forbade the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages, but it was badly enforced and was repealed by a subsequent amendment of the 20th of June 1889.
The powers of the governor are unusually small. Until 1909, when a constitutional amendment was adopted, he had no power of veto, and his very limited nominal powers of appointment and removal are controlled by a rotten-borough Senate. The other administrative officers are a secretary of state, an attorney-general, an auditor, a treasurer, a commissioner of public schools, a railroad commissioner, and a factory inspector, and various boards and commissions, such as the board of education, the board of agriculture, the board of health, and the commissioners of inland fisheries, commissioners of harbours and commissioners of pilots.
The legislative power is vested in the General Assembly,[1] which consists of a Senate made up of the lieutenant-governor and of one senator from each of the thirty-eight cities and townships in the state, and a House of Representatives of one hundred members, apportioned according to population, but with the proviso that each town or city shall have at least one member and none shall have more than one-fourth of the total (see History). Members of the legislature and all state officials are elected annually in November. A majority vote was formerly required, but since the adoption of the tenth amendment (November 28, 1893) a plurality vote has elected.
At the head of the judicial system is the supreme court (1747), divided since 1893 into an appellate division and a common pleas division, with final revisory and appellate jurisdiction upon all questions of law and equity. Below this are the twelve district courts, the town councils, probate courts in the larger towns, and justices of the peace. The seven judges of the supreme court and the district judges are elected by the General Assembly, the former during good behaviour, the latter for terms of three years.
The town (or township) is the unit of local government, the county being recognized only for judicial purposes and to a certain extent in the appointment by central administrative boards. There are five counties and thirty-eight towns. The municipal governments of Newport and Providence present interesting features, for which see the separate articles on these cities.
Education.—The public school system of Rhode Island was established in 1800, abolished in 1803, and re-established in 1828. At the head of it is a commissioner of education, appointed by the governor and the Senate, and a board of education, composed of the governor and the lieutenant-governor ex officio and six other members elected by the General Assembly. Under an act of the 12th of April 1883, as amended on the 4th of April 1902, education is compulsory for children between the ages of seven and fifteen, but the maximum limit is reduced to thirteen for children who are employed at lawful labour. The total enrolment in the public schools in 1905 was 71,425 and the total expenditure for public school purposes was $1,987,751. A considerable proportion of the Irish and the French Canadians send their children to the Roman Catholic parochial schools. The chief institutions for higher education are Brown University (1764), the State School of Design (1877), the State Normal School (reorganized 1898), and the Moses Brown School (1819), all at Providence (q.v.), and the State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (1888) at Kingston, a land grant college under the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, the Hatch Act of 1887 and the Adams Act of 1906. This institution was founded as an agricultural school in 1888 and became a college in 1892. It has departments of agriculture, engineering and science, a library of 15,000 volumes and an experiment station. There are state training-schools for teachers at Providence, Cranston, Bristol, Barrington, Central Falls, Warwick and Pawtucket.
Charitable and Penal Institutions.—A board of state charities and corrections, established in 1869, supervises and controls all of the penal, charitable and correctional institutions of the state at large and also the local almshouses. There were in 1910 nine members of the board, three from Providence county, one from each of the other counties, and one from the state at large; five were appointed by the governor with the consent of the Senate, and four were elected by the Senate. A group of institutions (under the control of the board) at Howard, in Cranston township, about 7 m. from Providence, including the Workhouse and House of Correction, the Hospital for the Insane (1869), the Almshouse, the State Prison and Providence County Jail, the Sockanosset School for Boys, and the Oaklawn School for Girls, are supported entirely or in part by the state. In addition to the institutions under the board of charities and corrections there are two under the board of education, and supported wholly or in part by the state, the School for the Deaf (1877) and the Home and School for Dependent and Neglected Children (1885) at Providence. The Soldiers' Home (1891) at Bristol, the Butler Hospital for the Insane (1847) at Providence, and a Sanitarium (1905) at Wallum Lake, in the township of Burrillville, also receive state aid.
Finance.—The chief sources of revenue in the order named are the general property tax, the tax on savings banks, the tax on insurance companies, and liquor licences. There is no corporation tax. The total receipts from all sources for the year 1909 were $2,317,512, the expenditures $2,345,359. The public debt, which originated in 1752, amounted to £70,000 sterling in 1764, to £4000 in 1775 and to $698,000 in 1783. Part of the Revolutionary debt was paid in depreciated paper, part was assumed by the United States government, part was paid at various rates of depreciation between 1803 and 1820, and the remainder, $43,971, was repudiated in 1847. Other obligations had accumulated in the meantime, however, so that the debt in 1848 amounted to $187,000. This was gradually reduced until the Civil War, when it was increased to $3,889,000 by 1865. A sinking fund commission was established in 1875, and the entire sum was extinguished by the 1st of August 1894. The issue of bonds for the construction of the new capitol building and other purposes has led, however, to a new debt, which at the beginning of 1910 amounted to $4,800,000. There was at the same time a sinking fund of $654,999. Before the adoption of the Federal constitution Rhode Island was badly afflicted with the paper money heresy. £5000 were printed in 1710, and from that time until 1751 there were nine separate issues. These were gradually retired, however, through the efforts of the mercantile classes, aided by the parliamentary statutes of 1751 and 1763, and by about 1763 the finances were again placed on a sound money basis. The influx of Continental currency gave some trouble during the War of Independence, but there were no further local issues until 1786, when £100,000 were issued.
The first banks organized in the state were the Providence Bank in 1791, the Bank of Rhode Island at Newport in 1795, and the Washington Bank at Westerly in 1800. Forty-four charters had been issued in 1826 and sixty in 1837. Partly through restrictive local legislation and partly as a result of the operation of the Suffolk system of redemption in Boston, these institutions were always conservative. During practically the entire period before the Civil War their note issues constituted a smaller proportion of the capital stock than those of any other state. By an act of 1858 which is still in force, annual reports must be presented to the state auditor. On the establishment of the national banking system, 1863-65, nearly all of the banks took out national charters. Since 1865 the most notable features have been the rise and decadence of the national banks and the rise of the trust companies. During the decade from 1890 to 1900 the deposits in the national banks increased only 5%, from $16,700,000 to $17,500,000; those of the trust companies increased 330%, from $12,000,000 to more than $40,000,000. During the period from 1890 to 1901 twenty national banks retired from business, and the total capital stock was reduced from about twenty millions to about thirteen millions of dollars.
History.—Rhode Island was founded by refugees from Massachusetts, who went there in search of religious and political freedom. The first settlements were made at Providence by Roger Williams (q.v.) in June 1636, and at Portsmouth on the island of Aquidneck by the Antinomians, William Coddington (1601-1678), John Clarke (1609-1676), and Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), in March-April 1638.
- ↑ Under the constitution of 1842 it was provided that there should be two sessions of the General Assembly annually: one at Newport in May, and the other in October to be held at South Kingstown once in two years, and the intermediate years alternately at Bristol and East Greenwich, an adjournment from the October session being held annually at Providence. In 1854 this was amended: one session was provided for to be held in Newport in May, an adjournment being held annually at Providence. And in 1900 by another amendment Providence became the only meeting-place of the General Assembly.
