The age-herald., 1899-12-28

eral senate. the governors demand for explanation or retraction and Senator Nor gans card in reply, which was published in all the Alabama papers this morning. This brings politics in the state to seeth- ing white heat condition. and year must yet elapse before the senatorial contest can be determined
 The university trustees are not politi- clans. and it is not their desire to make the action they have taken a part of the political play, but it becomes such neces- sarily while Governor Johnston is a candi- date for United States senator and the manipulator of the most complete political machine the state has ever known.
 Governor Johnston's troubles have come of his two-sided character. He is both politician and what is sometimes called "a man of affairs and 1t appears that he has made some unfortunate entanglements or his two lines of procedure. The Monte vallo land deal, the sale of the university lands and this accusation brought by Sen ator Morgan that the governor was in some way interested in trust enterprise have all come of the unfortunate admix- ture of the governors lines of action which it seems to have been impossible to keep running distinctly parallel.
 Before the governor became the chief of the democrats of the semi-populist vari- e'ty in Alabama he was the president of national bank and erstwhile one of the Birmingham land boomers. While posing as the champion of "the common people" against tho machinations of Wall street and the terrible gold bugs, the governor has found it necessary, from a private business point of view to keep up some association with the money devil, and some of the Alabama papers allege that the governors former business associate, General Fucker works that line while the governor attends to politics. The Marion Standard, for instance, has facetiously advised that "the people give Johnston and Fucker the mineral belt of Alabama and save the balance of the state."
 A committee composed of alumni of the Alabama University made a very thor ough investigation of the university land sale, and its report pronounces the sale both improper and illegal and makes some pungent criticisms of the governors &C., ton. It was on this report that the univer- sity trustees determined to institute action to have the sale set aside
 The governors organ, the Montgomery Journal, paper which, it is understood, he owns and controls, defends the sale on the ground that it has placed a large fund of ready cash in the university treasury and will relieve the taxpayers from the necessary of contributing to the university's support by legislative appropriation, as has been the usual custom, and that the lands sold were bringing no annual rev. enue. This sounds like the very shallow plea of the demagogue rather than valid excuse for selling the university lands at a price below their real value, as the gov ernors critics assert was done.
 Senator Morgon, in a card replying to Governor Johnston, says:
 'The charge is distinct and unambiguous that you owned or had owned a large amount of stock in an Alabama corpora tion-one of several that had sold their property of every kind to the New Jersey company-and that this Alabama corpora ton leads the procession in monster monopoly that had to leave Alabama to find home and shelter in New Jersey. You cannot misunderstood this charge, nor can any honest man mistake it. And, as I stated it in the senate, you know that 1t is strictly trre'
 This is independent of the university land deal, but, like that deal. it touches the money line of the governors opera tions. It will become one of the issues in the senatorial race and serve to increase the excitement and aerimony which the race has already developed