The age-herald., 1900-05-09
RAGE CONVENTION
 HAS ASSEMBLED
Hilary A. Herbert Delivers a
 Powerful Address.
BRINGS FORTH NEW IDEAS
In Welcoming Delegates to the State Gov. Johnston Showed Some Inter- esting Statistics on Proportion
 ofWhite and Negro Convicts

Montgomery, May s.-(specal)-On of
 the largest and most representative audi
 ences ever assembled in Montgomery met 1 in the Auditorium tonight at the opening of
 the conference of the southern society for l the promotion of the study of the race l conditions and problems in the south. The l Hon. J. B. Gaston, acting as temporary l chairman, introduced Mayor Joseph, who 1 welcomed the members in an eloquent l speech and expressed qualification at their l meeting in the capital city of the state. Among those who occupied seats upon l the platform tonight were former Govern l or MacCorkle of West Virginia John Tenn 1 pie Graves of Georgia, Mayor Waddell of 1 Wilmington, N. C.. Hon. Hilary A. Her l bert of Washington, Dr. H. B. Frissell of l Virginia, Dr. Julius D. Dreher of South 1 Carolina, Chief Statistician Walter F. Will 1 cox of the census bureau, John Roach l Stratton of Georgia, Alfred M. Stone of Mississippi, McGivans of Kentucky and i others. The conference will hold three ses- l sions tomorrow.
 The morning session will be devoted to ! the discussion of the franchise in the south, and in the afternoon the society 1 will hold its first annual meeting and elect 1 officers. The evening session will be de-
 voted to the discussion of popular educa- | tion in the south. The programme con- 1 ldlnS the names or some or the most nOteu | speakeers in the country.
 Hon. Bourke Cochran of New York will l arrive in the city tomorrow, and will par | ticipate in the proceedings of the confer ence. He will speak Thursday evening upon the subject "The Negro as Amer , ican Problem"
 l Governor Johnston made an address of welcome in the name of the state and gave | interesting facts and figures.
 | In welcoming the members of the society 1 to Montgomery, Governor Johnston called ;, attention to the great importance of the | question they were present to discuss, and | was sure all desired solution that will 1 be just to both races. In Alabama consid- | erable progress has been made in the line | of educating the negro. The school fund l is paid almost wholly by the whites and i distributed impartially to children of both l races
 Convict records show a steadily increaS- l ing number of negro convicts. The record l shows S9 per cent of convicts are negroes. | There are now in the penitentiary 253 | whites and 2,147 negroes Of the total of D. 1 147 colored convicts, 925 are confined for se- | rious crimes. On October l. 1878, there were
 654 state convicts against 1,76O now. We l have now one negro in the penitentiary for each BY of population and l white person ! for each 3270.
 l The negro who accumulates property be- | comes a conservative citizen, ceases to lis- leil to pOHtlcdl dSllalOrS, ana QeSlfeS no re- 1 turn of irresponsible and corrupt legisla- tion. The more he accumuates the greater l his interest in the reign of law and the | preservation of peace.
 Tn behalf of the commonwealth of Ala l bama, extend you a hearty welcome to it's l capital city that has nearly doubled it's | wealth and numbers in the last twenty 1 years, although surrounded by a population
 that numbers three negroes to every white"
 | Hon. Hilary 4. Herbert
 Hon. J. B. Gaston introduced the Hon. | Hilary A. Herbert in an interesting speech 1 Judge Gaston called attention to the impor- | tance of the questions to be discussed. and 1 the effect they would not only have on l southern districts, but the country at large l Following are some of the ideas advanced | by Mir. Herbert.
 Hon. Hilary A. Herbert, presiding as | permanent chairman, delivered an address 1 on The Problems That Present Them | selves"
 | He began by thanking the society for the honor conferred, and said that neither | Porto Rico nor the Philippines, nor the l open door in China, nor all of them were | of as much import to the south as the | south as the problems that present them l selves to the southern people at home He 1 said in part:
 The negro question had always been | with the people of the south and would I abide with them in one phase or another 1 No satisfactory and conclusive settlement | of the problem had ever been reached, and no time for the study of questions arising l out of the relations between the two races | had ever occurred so opportune as the l present.
 We can now study not only the negro | in Africa, San Domingo and Hayti and the l West Indies, and as a slave in America; l but also the negro after thrty-five years | of freedom in the southern states. Science l has shed light on anthropology, and since | the Dark Continent has been opened up we can the neglected opportunities | that have been laid before the negro | there. In almost all of the discussions of | the past the negro has been but the foot | ball of politics, and in those hot struggles | for place and power, passion and preju- dice obscured the truth that often men could not see even that which lay directly
 under their eyes.
 Non-PoiiticaI Discussions We must keep politics, at least in the sense of partisanship, outside of our de- Alterations, foregoing all crimination and recrimnation and look at the facts of the past only as they shed light on the facts of the present The present is happily an era of good feeling between the sections.
 more complete and perfect than any that has ever existed. The brave soldiers of the north and the south, by their courage 1 and devotion the battlefield won the ad-
 miration of each other, and this laid the foundation upon which patriots and statesmen have since builded that more perfect union which the fathers of the republic dreamed of in the preamble to the constitution, and never lived to see. The force bill has been dropped, the negro was not in the presidential campaign of 1S96,, the new constitution of Mississippi has hepp decided the of the United States to be valid, and we have | now the sympathy of thoughtful men in the north to an extent that never before existed.
 ''Sociologists in that section are studying our situation. No paper could portray
 more clearly the gravity of the problems now before the south than an address by -<,lia iae .-tnt tistician of the