The age-herald., 1901-08-04
PROVISION FOR STATE
 IMPROVEMENTS WANTED
BY J. W DURosE.

To the Editor of the Age Herald.
 Unless the provision of the constitution of 1875, prohibiting internal improvement by the State, which was formally readopt- ed by the convention last week, shall be reconsidered, qualified and adapted to con- ditions which now exist, the State must sacrifice to a delusion and snare an op- portunity to exhibit to the world an ex- ample of statecraft most exhaulted.
 The argument against license to the Legislature to tax and disburse taxes ad libitum, Is not involved in the use of the States property in negro convicts to cut the VanHoose canal or build the Milner railroad from Florence to Mobile I need not argue that proposition. It is absurd to refuse to employ State property in burglars, forgers, rapists, murderers, who remain State property forever, as long as law and order shall prevail on so fiimsy pretext that internal improvement by the State Is per SC a menace to popular liberty.
 But If it cannot be denied that the South and North Railroad has added at leass $10o, 900 to values In Alabama, 1t Is a correlated theory at least, that the Van Hoose canal or the Milner railroad from Florence to Mobile promise, if completed for use, a vast increase of the material wealth of the State, and promise an in- estimable influence upon good govern ment in Alabama, the prosperity and nap piness of the people in every county and precinct where commerce is known, rom border to border
 What becomes of the flimsy pretext of peril to democratic institutions in State aid, united, to internal improvements when we discover that the same State rights General Assembly of 1S59-6O, which provided for the meeting of the secession convention did also provide a charter for the Bank of Alabama" at Mobile, with a capital stock limit of $2,500,O00, on ex- press condition that every subscriber to this new bank stock should show, as condition precedent of his subscription to the bank capital stock, that he then was the owner of an equal amount Of stock In the South and North Railroad. Not on- ly did this Harry Percy of the State rights movement, Alabama, ordain that the great new private institution, the bank of issue known as the Bank of Alabama, and the railroad to unite Mobile with the mineral wealth of the State should be all lied in mutual support, but the State itself subscribed to the capital stock of the bank, a large proportion, in order to aid the railroad (Acts of 1S59-60. Nor is this instance of the harmonious relations of the State rights doctrine with the principle of State aid to internal improvements con fined to Alabama. In the period between the nullihcation of South Carolina, in 1882, to the secession of that State, in 1S60, the Legislature enacted State aid to canal and railroad to the a large amount of money. Georgia has her State road with perfect immunity from political jeopardy. Yet more along this line, the constitution of the Confederate States forbid, in effect, internal improvement by the Congress, but expressly provided that the State or combination of states might improve rivers and harbors under government su- pervision at State expense! There you have it. Barnwell Rhett Toombs, Steph- ems and one or two others wrote the or ganic law of the Confederacy and were careful to recognize and provide for the principal of internal improvement by the State.
 There is no reasonable limit to the space one might fill with figures and argument going to prove that it is the duty of the convention now in session to allow the State to build, own and operate, or lease, subject to State regulation, the Florence and Mobile Railroad but I shall not tax your patience further at this time than to reproduce section of the act of 1S92-9S,