The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-03-20
Attracted Much Attention.

Colonel William Orr of LaPort. India na,. is a wealthy horseman spending the winter in Selma. He is a staunch Rspub- | lican and Is a resident of Congressman Crumpacker's district. On that account the following extract from The LaPort Herald written by Colonel Orr from Selma
 will be read with great deal of Interest by Democrats in Alabama:
 "As many of your readers know. when I left home I brought horse with me, partly for speed development, as Selma has among her many good things one or
 the best mile tracks in the South. but
 more especially to have something to
 busy myself with. and I am glad that have him with me. as take long drives in the country almost every day. Being
 a farmer by occupation, 1t affords an op-
 portunity of comparing notes with those
 in the same business here. They usually consist of quite large uact of land.
 Some plantations have as many as 10000 acres, but most of them varying in size from 800 to 1000 acres. Cotton Is the principal and in fact the only money crop. There is very little corn and oats, and there is the scrubbiest kind of stock. ex- cepting the milking breed which is mostly of the Jersey kind, and l see some very good ones. But of all the apologies Tor a domestic. animal. the regular Alabama razor DaCk nOR VIII tdhc oiie SdNc'
 The lands here as in other States consist of different conditions. such as timber lands. low or bottom, table or low lands The tillable part is almost exclu- sively devoted to the cultivation of cot ton Cotton as a money maker l think exceeds our wheat crop In its paImiest days The rest of their lands. owing to the absence of stock of any kind. seems to have little or no value as income prop erty.
 ..The cotton is raised mostly by the negro, in fact the negro and the mule are about the whole thing when 1t comes to farming. Some of them. you can call 1t the negro or the mule, either one. are quite industrious and intelligent. Quite A few of the former own their own
 farms but most of them are shiftless and
 worthless. especially those that drift irto the city. Occasionally one among many proves to be a Booker Washington on small scale
 politically speaking I would say that during my four months stay in the South I have seen great many or its phases. I have visited the planter in his palatiaI home on the plantation. I have seen the darkey in his lowly cabin in all of his native ignorance, have been an in- teresting listener in the courts and have
 seen him pumped up and twisted as a wit ness until he did not know whether he
 was afoot or on horseback. and as this Is
 in the so called Blsckbelt where there are four or more negro voters to one
 white man. and if they had the franchise which they have not got since the adop-
 ton of the new constitution, and Mir Crumpacker had to live under their rule for a short while. he would about con- clude that when it comes to getting up against the real thing it makes all the difference in the world. l think after
 living on a diet of this kind for short
 time he would be willing to concede to
 the South all the representation 1t now has with the privilege of solving the question according to it's own idets.