The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-14
SUNDAY xonHrHo


 matter
 Now take into consideration the sit uation of our county. There are two counties that are shoe strings and right down in this section some of these people are twenty miles from their county sites and some over here are fifty or sixty and there are e5,000 In those counties. none of whom are closer than twenty miles from their county site. To be exact there are 32,1z5. Here one of the counties is ffty-five miles long and twelve miles wide and while from the west end of the county the people have to go thir- ty-f1ve miles to the Court House, from the northeast corner they have to go thirty-five right through the country. There is no branch court or anything of the kind. In another county the length is sixty-five miles and the widt sixteen or eighteen, and the county site now is nine miles from the upper end of the county and the lower end of the county have to go over fifty miles,, People who can afford it and who live on the railroads can get on the train and by going out of the way can get to the county site but the com mon people have to go through the country to get to the Court House and If 1t is a little matter they just put Hp with it.
 have mentioned the Court House question and the expense and while I do not intend to say that everybody favors this, I do say that a great ma 3ority of the people favor it.
 The time of the gentleman here ex- pired, and on motion of MT. White the rules were suspended and on the fur ther motion of Mir. Sanford the time of the gentleman was extended ten minutes.
 MT. Malone-Now, as to the question brought up by the gentleman from Fillmore as to the action of the County Convention
 MT. Samford-That relates only to Henry County?
 Mir. Malone-Yes, sir. In our county everything Is nominated by the white primary. The Convention is supposed to have little to do. This question is not supposed to come up in the County Convention, notwithstanding it was at issue so far as the delegates were con- cerned and the people expected when the delegates were elected that carried 1t witS the population. Now. when we got to the County Convention at Headland, which is forty miles from the lower end of the county the real question was the selection of delegates to the State Convention. Now I shall have to go into district affairs just the least little bit. My friend Mr. SollR was recognized as the wire grass can didate from that district. He carried the four counties and carried Barbour County. He was inclined to believe that there would be some danger of the Barbour delegation not carrying out in spirit as we'll as letter his instructions and while our county was also for the Hon. Jerry Williams of Barbour, we did not deem 1t best in view of all the facts to instruct for MT. Williams when MT. Sollie might need the wire grass counties to hold the other coun- ties down. In accordance with that agreement the Chairman of the Con- vention. who was a partner of Mir. Espy and friend of mine, agreed with us that a certain committee headed by MT. Lee of Columbia should be appointed to select delegates to the State Convention. That agreement was made so that the friends of Mir. Will Hams could have proper representa- tion although not to be instructed. For some unknown reason MT. Lee was not put on that committee and that gave serious offense to MT. Lee and his friends and they arose in the convention and stated they would not III, Now with that drawback operating against me l got POT votes and the other man fifteen in the primary. Immediately upon that when more than half the delegates had gone home, notwithstanding had a vote of POT to 10. MT. Lee moved to instruct tine county delegates, of which I was one, against the reduction of the area, which was no doubt hit at me, as he thought I had gone back on him He afterwards expressed regret for de- ing that. The next beat below where the question of another new, county was agitated where l got Il to 5. one man representing the beat cast that beat against me. The lower beat where l got every vote but one or two was the same way. And so it was right along although the race had been made on that issue and the peo- pie were overwhelmingly for it. We have population of s0.00o in the three counties. They are abundantIy able to take care of themselves. One of the counties when it was organized only few years ago had 2,900 inhabitants Now it has 19,000. We have doubled in the last decade. If we were to attempt to move the records from Abbeville to Dothan there would be another sec- tlon ntty miles from us, and you would hot give any relief to the southeast corner of Dale or the east side of Tie- neva. which would be from thirty to thirty-five miles away.
 1 have explained to you that our peo- pie favor this movement almost solid ly though 1 do not say all of them. MT. Sollie is present. and I have an- nounced in his presence what l under stand to be his position, and he will be able to speak for himself. Why Dale should object. cannot see. The upper end of the county is willing te few could be taken from Geneva and with our section of Henry there could be carved out a most prosperous and promising new county.
 Now this substitute don't make thu new county. All that my substitute does is to make possible the forma tion of that new county but it takes two-thirds vote of the legisla- ture. Henry County will only have one Senator. Geneva and Dale will have two and the other counties will have three representatives to Henrys one so that you will see that the matter is practically left to our own people. We are asking fair proposition. No job at all.
 The average. of the counties under my substitute would be 571 and the popu- lation would be 45,500 in round fig ureS.
 Some of our commissioners go fifty miles to court. We haven't a tax col lector in twenty miles nor a clerk. The reSuIt iS that nobody knows anvthiDg