other county officers are a treasurer, clerk, register of deeds, attorney,
surveyor, sheriff, assessor and superintendent of public instruction.
The counties have been divided into municipal townships, each of
which elects a trustee, a clerk and a treasurer, who together constitute
a board of directors for the management of township affairs.
The trustee is also the assessor. Cities or towns having a population
of 2000 or more may become cities of the first class whenever
a favourable majority vote is obtained at a general or special
election held in that city or town, and this question must be submitted
at such an election whenever 35% of the legal voters
petition for it.
Miscellaneous Laws.—The property rights of husband and wife are practically equal, and either may buy, sell or mortgage real estate, other than the homestead, without the consent of the other. Among the grounds for a divorce are adultery, extreme cruelty, habitual drunkenness, gross neglect of duty and imprisonment for felony. Article XII. of the constitution exempts from forced sale the homestead of any family in the state to the extent of 160 acres of land in the country, or 1 acre in a city, town or village, provided the value of the same does not exceed $5000 and that the claims against it are not for purchase money, improvements or taxes. A corporation commission of three members, elected for a term of six years, is intrusted with the necessary powers for a rigid control of public service corporations. A state board of arbitration, composed of two farmers, two employers and two employés is authorized to investigate the causes of any strike affecting the public interests, and publish what it finds to be the facts in the case, together with recommendations for settlement. Labour laws, passed by the first legislature (1908), were amended and made more radical by the legislature of 1909: a child labour law forbids the employment of children under 14 in factories, workshops, theatres, bowling-alleys, pool-halls, steam-laundries or other dangerous places (to be defined by the commissioner of labour), and no child under 16 is to be employed in such places unless able to read and write simple English sentences or without having attended school during the previous year; no child under 16 is to be employed in any of several (enumerated) dangerous occupations; no child under 16 is to be employed more than 8 hours in any one day, or more than 48 hours in any one week in any gainful occupation other than agriculture or domestic service; age and schooling certificates are required of children between 14 and 16 in certain occupations. A state dispensary system for the sale of intoxicating liquors was authorized by the constitution, but the popular vote in 1908 was unfavourable to the continuance of the system, the sentiment seeming to be for rigid prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors. A law passed in May 1908 against nepotism (closely following the Texas law of 1907) forbids public officers to appoint (or vote for) any person related to them by affinity or consanguinity within the third degree to any position in the government of which they are a part; makes persons thus related to public officers ineligible to positions in the branch in which their relative is an official; and renders any official making such an appointment liable to fine and removal from office.
Education.—The common school system is administered by a state superintendent of public instruction, a state board of education, county superintendents and district boards. The state board is composed of the state superintendent, who is president of the board; the secretary of state, who is secretary of the board; the attorney-general and the governor. Each district board is composed of three members elected for a term of three years, one each year. Each district school must be open at least three months each year, and children between the ages of eight and sixteen are required to attend either a public or a private school, unless excused because of physical or mental infirmity. There are separate schools for whites and negroes. In addition to instruction in the ordinary branches, the teaching in the district schools of the elementary principles of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, stock-feeding, forestry, building country roads and domestic science is required. A law of 1908 requires that an agricultural school of secondary grade be established in each of the five supreme court judicial districts, and that an experimental farm be operated in connexion with each; and in 1909 the number of these districts was increased to six. There is a state industrial school for girls, teaching domestic science and the fine arts. The higher institutions of learning established by the state are the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, a land grant college with an agricultural experiment station at Stillwater; the Oklahoma School of Mines at Wilburton; the Colored Agricultural and Normal University at Langston; the Central Normal School at Edmond; the North-western Normal School at Alva; the South-western Normal School at Weatherford, Custer county; the South-eastern Normal School at Durant, Bryan county; the East Central Normal School at Ada; the North-eastern Normal School at Tahlequah, Cherokee county; and the University of Oklahoma at Norman. The State University (established in 1892, opened in 1893) embraces a college of arts and sciences, and schools of fine arts, applied science, medicine, mines and pharmacy. In 1907–1908 it had 40 instructors and 790 students. There is a University Preparatory School (1901) at Tonkawa in Kay county, and there are state schools of agriculture at Tishomingo and at Warner. The common schools are in large part maintained out of the proceeds of the school lands (about 1,200,000 acres), which are sections 16 and 36 in each township of that portion of the state which formerly constituted Oklahoma Territory, and a Congressional appropriation of $5,000,000 in lieu of these sections in what was formerly Indian Territory. The university, agricultural and mechanical college and normal schools also are maintained to a considerable extent out of the proceeds of section 13 in several townships. The university owns land valued at $3,670,000. Among the institutions of learning, neither maintained nor controlled by the state, are Epworth University (Methodist Episcopal, 1901) at Oklahoma City, and Kingfisher College at Kingfisher.
Charities and Correctional Institutions.—The state has a hospital for the insane at Fort Supply, the Whitaker Orphans' Home at Pryor Creek, the Oklahoma School for the Blind at Fort Gibson and the Oklahoma School for the Deaf at Sulphur; and the legislature of 1908 appropriated money for the East Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane at Vinita, a School for the Feeble-Minded at Enid, a State Training School for Boys at Wynnewood and a State Reformatory (at Granite, Greer county) for first-time convicts between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. Under the constitution the supervision and inspection of charities and institutions of correction is in the hands of a State Commissioner of Charities and Corrections, elected by the people. The commissioner must inspect once each year all penal, correctional and eleemosynary institutions, including public hospitals, jails, poorhouses and corporations and organizations doing charitable work; and the commissioner appears as next friend in cases affecting the property of orphan minors, and has power to investigate complaints against public and private institutions whose charters may be revoked for cause by the commissioner. By act of legislature a State Board of Public Affairs was created; it is made of five members appointed by the governor, with charge of the fiscal affairs of all state institutions. Convicts were sent to the state penitentiary of Kansas until January 1909, when it was charged that they were treated cruelly there; in 1909 work was begun on a penitentiary at McAlester.
Banking and Finance.—The unique feature of the banking system (with amendments adopted by the second legislature becoming effective on the 11th of June 1909) is a fund for the guaranty of deposits. The state banking board, which is composed of the governor, lieutenant-governor, president of the board of agriculture, state treasurer and state auditor, levies against the capital stock of each state bank and trust company, organized or existing, under the laws of the state to create a fund equal to 5% of average daily deposits other than the deposits of state funds properly secured. One-fifth of this fund is payable the first year and one-twentieth each year thereafter; 1% of the increase in average deposits is collected each year. Emergency assessments, not to exceed 2%, may be made whenever necessary to pay in full the depositors in an insolvent bank; if the guaranty fund is impaired to such a degree that it is not made up by the 2% emergency assessment, the state banking board issues certificates of indebtedness which draw 6% interest and which are paid out of the assessment. Any national bank may secure its depositors in this manner if it so desires. The bank guarantee law was held to be valid by the United States Supreme Court in 1908 after the attorney-general of the United States had decided that it was illegal.
The revenue for state and local purposes is derived chiefly from taxes. The constitutional limit on the state tax levy is 312 mills on a dollar, and legislation has fixed the limit of the county levy at 5 mills, of the levy in cities at 7, in incorporated towns at 5, in townships at 3, and in school districts at 5. There is a tax on the gross receipts of corporations, a graduated land tax on all holdings exceeding 640 acres, a tax on income exceeding $3500, and a tax on gifts and inheritances. The aggregate amount of indebtedness which the state may have at any time is limited by the constitution to $400,000, save when borrowing is necessary to repel an invasion, suppress an insurrection or defend the state in war.
History.—With the exception of the narrow strip N. of the most N. section of Texas the territory comprising the present state of Oklahoma was set apart by Congress in 1834, under the name of Indian Territory, for the possession of the five southern tribes (Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws and Chickasaws) and the Quapaw Agency. Early in 1809 some Cherokees in the south-eastern states made known to President Jefferson their desire to remove to hunting grounds W. of the Mississippi, and at first they were allowed to occupy lands in what is now Arkansas, but by a new arrangement first entered into in 1828 they received instead, in 1838, a patent for a wide strip extending along the entire N. border of Indian Territory with the exception of the small section in the N.E. corner which was reserved to the Quapaw Agency. By treaties negotiated in 1820, 1825, 1830 and 1842 the Choctaws received for themselves and the Chickasaws a patent for all that portion of the territory which
