Birmingham age-herald., 1895-02-17
MIR. CoMER REPLIES.

-mind of man is influenced and controlled by his surroundings. That you having been attorney for q large railroad corpora tion a number of years, studying and de-
 lending their interest, became by naturs' s
 process their champion, and thus, whether you would or not, within their hands. For this reason 1 think their counsellors should be ineligible to the office of judge, lawmaker or chief executive. Large cor porations, whether rightly or not, are es- teemed the menace of civil liberty, and our country today, from state capital to na-
 tional, is engaged in the gigantic fight 10 estop their infringement on the rights of the masses. The railroads of Alabama, fast growing into immense corporations, with distant and alien owners, their values entirely speculative and their stocks and
 bonds issued without reference 10 actual
 cost multiplied according to the shrewd-
 ness of the manipulator and to suit the ex- agencies of the time, and tossed around on the bear and bull market with equal refer ence to the prospect of income or the ad- vantage of further manipulation. This, non- resident is sufficient to make a business man less malicious and selfish than you picture me distrust the motive for the continued reappoint- ment of what has proven to Do a strictly clerical railroad commission. The con-
 
 standing or character, Is not part of thls discussion, and in criticising the official acts of you or them it is foul to charge that it is with the assassin's 8 stiletto, because it is the right free to every citizen.
 will add that am a great admirer of the railroad officials, one of whom is my brother. They are all men of superb abil- ity and great integrity, and. like honorable men do their best to push the interest of companies they represent.
 ato rtn fian h0 Nfft1t1 liaof fnn n made in the interest of the people and de- signed for their care and protection. Cap taia Bragg was the first president, and h his effort to right wrongs as he saw them and as the people saw them, for they petitioned redress, there was conflict of authority. He saw the weakness of the statute and petitioned the legislature for greater power. You, member of the legislature then, paid attorney, led the opposition to the bill. At the same time the bill and fought his reappointment. Governor O'Neal, through this in- huence, refused to renominate him, notwithstanding the majority of the legislature, as per your statement. was h bis favor. Was he right or was you? He was fresh from the fight and engaged in the peoples interest. You were fZesh from your office, and engaged in their interest. You charge that he asked for despotic power. Was he right or was you wrong2 Captain Bragg is dead. He was great man and rendered the state splendid service. His was the leadership that delivered the state from carpetbag and scalawag rule, and with your assistance would probably have settled this railroad question forever. His short term as president made Union Springs and Opelika other than way stations, and left them the inheritance of competing as trade centers. You admit that the railroad threatened you at that time with their bus- mess. Don't you see the danger of having their attorneys for legislators.
 Soon after your first inauguration 1, with others, representing the Wholesale Grocers' association of Birmingham, waited on you to show how that association was handi- capped by the tariff methods of the rail roads. We gave you sheet showing in contra columns the comparative rate of freight per mile as charged by the same railroads in their Alabama and Georgia di- visions on classes B, 0, D and F. This includes meat, flour and all feed stuff. And at the same time a letter from Mir. Trammell, presidento of the railroad commission or Georgia, stating that the Georgia rates had been adjudged fair by the people and had been sustained by all the courts. According to that comparative sheet the Alabama rate was 75 per cent higher than the Georgia rate. We told you we were going to introduce a bill asking for greater power to the commission. Your reply was discouraging. The bill was lost. The power exercised by the commis- sion of Georgia, ilnmeasurably greater than that asked for in Alabama, and exer- cised so as to give the people of Georgia local rate on the necessaries of life but lite tie over half that paid on the same roads in Alabama, which power was deemed reasonable and right, and the full exercise of the same sustained by the people and courts, through series of years saved the people milIious of dollars.
 Illinois and Texas modelled their laws after Georgia. These three great states, the most prosperous, perhaps, in the union, hold these great corporations in the strong hand of the law land protect the people. Is Alabama, under your lead ership, wiser than these? Is the state ot Alabama, at the end of your term, it's rail- roads and the relation of the one to the other in better fix than Georgia and its railroads? Has the millions of dollars paid by the planters of the state, and gone as road rent to alien coffers, benefited us any where?
 Captain Bragg made splendid fight, but Governor O Neal could not stand The rail- road pressure, and you, even back in those days, championed their views, and even at this date so thoroughly impreg- mated are you with the railroads point of view that you charge your dead fellow townsman with having sought despotic power for the state, power that the state of Georgia claims as her inalienable right. The defeat of Captain Bragg meant the de- feat of the utility Of the commission, and so inane did it become that even you had to prevent it's abolishment. It was the veriest sinecure, and in your administra- tion the millennium of railroad rule was reached. You made a special depot act for the commission, yet under it they could not build depot and shed at the capital city.
 Freight rates on the necessaries of life are practically the same in Alabama that they were fifteen years ago. You know how evervtbinO else ia doWn-how much the purchasing power of money is increased yet it will not buy one pound more of freight. Is that right? l think that your conduct-however innocent is not the question-brought this about, your con- tinual reappointment of men to this re- sponsble and well paid office, who, from your long service as attorney of the road, you were obliged to have known were harm.