The age-herald., 1902-03-02

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 to constitution, but who declines to run.
 
 l for their labor than any other class on l Gods green earth. We come not as cringing CUTS begging bone but stanti- 1 ing erect like men, as citizens and tax l payers of the State of Alabama, asking no faVors at the hands of the railroad corporations of Alabama, but demanding of them that they comply with the laws on the statute books of Alabama which
 were enacted for our protection.
 "Is 1t unreasonable, gentlemen. or un- l fair to the railroads, for to ask that
 an Alabama farmer shall have the same
 rights in Alabama markets that the citi-
 zens of other states have in said mar | kets? Shipping over the same rails? We
 do not speak unadvisedly, nor without
 due consider ation, when we make the
 statement that Alabama shippers pay an-
 nually million and half dollars more l for hauling the same amount of goods
 over the same mileage than the citizens
 of Georgia. This fact was ascertained
 by a careful compilation of comparative
 statistics of Alabama and Georgia. As
 much money as 1t takes to run our state 1 government
 l 'The paramount consideration in a
 prosperous agriculture Is a market for
 the surplus farm products. It Is folly to 1 talk to a farmer about diversfying his
 crops, when I tell you, gentlemen, of the
 adverse conditions under which we farm l CTS of Alabama labor. I speak of my l own personal knowledge, and can pro- l duce the expense bills to verify my state 1 ments. 1t costs the Talladega farmer l two and one-third times as much to ship
 his hay to Birmingham from McEldery 1 Station, as the Tennessee farmer pays, fna lG mi od
 further away from Birmingham. If he 1 wants to ship rye straw to Chattanooga 1 1t costs him nearly five times as much
 as the rate from Chattanooga to Mont l gomery. If he wants to ship his rye l2O
 miles to an Alabama market, 1t costs 1 him as much as the farmer in Northeast 1 Kansas has to pay to get his grain to Montgomery. If he wants to ship cow l peas twenty-six miles, the rate is one and one-half times as much as the rate
 on grain from Chicago to Talladega or to Montgomery. In fact. an Alabama farm CT is practically prohibited from selling
 his surplus farm products in the neigh
 boring markets of his own state II he has to ship over the railroads of his state. It is a reflection on the intelligence ana
 on the manhood of the citizenship Of
 Alabama that such a state of affairs should be tolerated one day. l state but the truth gentlemen, when l tell you that the railroad corporations operating
 in the state of Alabama violate the laws
 of the state without let or intolerance
 365 days in the year.
 WHAT RELIEF IS PROMISED? All of these things have been stated ana charged in the most public places ana I print and rem aims undenied and uncontra- dicted. if then the factory and the for mer constituting three-fourths to tour- l ffths of our population have not the ne-
 rros cur dog chance when it comes to 1 dealing with these great taxing powers.
 What relief does the logical candidate and l his co-adherents promise the people? wish to emphatically declare that l am l not the enemy of the railroads. They l are a great public necessity ana should | he A. great public benefaction, but in
 what age of the world has unrestrained
 power to tax failed to tax too much, In l what age has unlimited power failed to | oppress The revolutionary fathers fought l for less cause, Bunker Hill was built on | less oppression and l squarely believe | that the leaders of Alabama are in certain sense partakers of the spells or it
 would not be stood a minute. 1 don't mean that they are necessarily deDauched, l hut like the Tories of 1776-83, being In the | kings councel and favor (and maybe pay) | if was not far stretch to believe him right. The farm product of the State is banded around by shylocks, factory interest sub- l served to what 1t can be made to pay.
 WANT MAN FOR PEOPLE. The business interest of the State bull
 jed and hampered by large charges, petty
 exactions and delays, what the people
 want is not logical candidate but man,
 a man for the people, one who will not 6un ivth
 of the campaign fund. extend courtesies
 of private coaches, special trains and
 extend junkets expecting the barter that
 goes with 1t, one who will make his ap- pointments with the expectation that they will serve the best interest of the
 State as well as his past and future polit- ical aspirations, one who would not ap-
 point a man to an important office who was known to be failure because that
 man might be useful to him, one who
 would meet a threat of a cohort of 5Co0
 or 5000 and odd men, if it was proposed
 to abridge the power to tax, with the de- claration that he was executive of the whole State, that he would carry out the duty to see that the weak as well as the strong had equity, that if in doing this som e thousands of men suffer an abridg- ment of pay, it would be better than that hundreds of thousands of producers and | consumers should De nelu up dilu neeceu and the vital interest of the State sapped and prejudiced In the language of MT. Burk, before the English parliament. he would say that the shearer had found wolf and not a lamb. Governor Jelks, some dags ago published a statement of good conditions in Alabama. Some time since MT. Leedy, of Birmingham, published comparative list of tax values in the az
 ricultural and manufacturing counties,
 showing stay and decrease, in the one
 and increase in the other. attributing the
 inertia of agricultural and counties values
 to the laxness of the tax com missioner. I
 took issue with him at the time and I
 take issue with Governor Jelks now, there
 is decadence in the agricultural counties.
 there Is emigration and not immigration.
 Barbour and Russel, the counties of the
 Governor and president of the railroad
 commission both show decadence, land values have decreased, what's the trou- ble? McEldery and others state that the
 farmer is not given the ghost of a show. In these two counties, where the railroads cross the Chattahoochee at Eufaula and Columbus, it has been charged that they doubled the rate on farm products. Yer fly the lambs are being shorn and that too under the nose of the shepherd.
 The Birmingham district, north Ala