The age-herald., 1900-01-17
Pours Hot Shot Into the Governors Forts and AssaiIs His Batteries Charges Him With Inconsis-
 tency-Deiends His Own
 Uttera ces.

"Sir-Your letter of the 4th instant, in re- ply to mine of the 22d of December last, reached me. today in company with your newspaper, in which you published it.
 Your business was pressing in New York, or your indifference was sublime, that caused you to wait for ten days to read letter. replying to a public demand on me that l should retract' a statement made by me in the senate. I denied the statement you imputed to me, and now you take your usual refuge in saying that friend of mine made it. The truth is that you eagerly adopted statement that you thought you could use with advantage in the proceedings then pending against you in Tuscallosa, by attributing to me the making of a false accusation against the governor of Alabama in speech in the senate
 You do not now attempt to challenge any statement I made in the senate, and proceed then to say you regret the temper I displayed
 q am not quite able to bear, patiently, all the misstatements you can invent and print. assailing a man whom you are un- grateful enough to reproach for having supported you for governor without mak- ing due inquiry into your character. "I believed I was doing the people a ser vice, and you an honor that you deserved, when supported you for governor. But you now quote the fact as committing me to your subsequent conduct in office. Arnold could well have quoted the friendship of General Washington to jasti- fly his treason to the United States. The whole length and breadth of my statement in the senate is now confessed by you in these words:
 Had you simply denied the statement attributed to you there would have been no further issue between us as to that. You now say that you charged that T owned, or had owned, a large amount
 of n Alabama CnTDOrltiOn.
 one of several that had sold all their property of every kind to New Jer- sey company" That is true to the ex- tent that I owned the N"large' amount of about fourteen hundred dollars Of stock in the American Coal company, and I am unable to see any crime in
 disposing of that to a New Jersey conn., pany.'
 MT. Maben says you assisted in pro- moting the New Jersey corporation, and this you do not deny.
 The Indictment
 'The case, then, is this: The governor of Alabama aided and abetted plan to self out all the property of several cor porations chartered, organized and operat- ing in Alabama to a New Jersey corpora ton, called the SlossIShefield company, the property to be owned and managed and the business to be conducted by that New Jersey combination
 
 the monster Trusts in this country have adopted, and New Jersey is the state in which they are chartered.
 "You went to New Jersey to assist in this unlawful combine, because the laws of Alabama would not permit you to do this in the state of which you are gov ernor.
 You must have known this if you ever consulted the many decisions of the su- preme court of the United States, which denounce such transactions as unlawful, and hold that the corporati tions in which you held stock, and tine others, led by the governor, not only violated the law. but rendered their chanters forfeitaIble by sell ing all their property to a foreign corpora ticn, and placing all their powers under Its control.
 "Ths cases which cited in my letter of December 22, decide this to be law.
 II will quote an extract from one of the cases to which I cited you in my letter: The Central Transportation company against the Pullman Car company 139 U. s.:
 Neither the grant of a franchise
 to transport passengers, nor a general
 authority to sell and dispose of prop
 erty, empowers the grantee, while it
 continues to exist as a corporation, to
 sell or lease its entire property and
 Franchise to another corpora tion'
 This has been many times reaffirmed by the supreme court of the United States
 You had full opportunity given you in my letter of the 22d of December, to deny that l correctly state the law, and you are silent on that point. Those contracts were void, and no count would enforce them. But that is a matter between you and those Alabama corporations and the New Jersey corporation, and I have no disposi- ton to interfere in your personal affairs. Nebther have imputed to you any origi- nal purpose in what you did dn disposing or the property of the American Coal com pany, if that ds the proper name of it, and the lands sold by you and your partner General Fucker. or in selling the Uni versity lands reserve my opinion as to your culpabilfty until the courts have acted.
 "As far as I have chosen to go, or will go, until you have answered the letter of the committee of the alumni association. calling for the facts is to say that your assistance in combining these corporations and others into this enormous trust was unlawful and exceedingly dangerous to the state of which you are governor and un- worthy of your high office. Purpose and Motive 'Your purpose and your motive in cre- at,ng this trust combination Is boldly sta ted py GeneraI hucker, your partner, in his letter to Colonel John, as follows: T will state, too, that 1t was neces- sary to have New Jersey charter only because Alabama legislators have been too narrow to admit of larger capitalization than $100O0,000 in their state
 "The narrow legislators of Alabama, in refusing to give to corporations a capital | stock of over s100O0OOO Is what drove the for powers that Alabama would not grant