The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-12-28
PHOSPHATE FOUND
 NEAR MONTGOMERY.
Mineral Wealth Not Entirely
 Confined to One District
GOSSIP OF STATE CAPITAL
Several Interesting Questions Bearing On New Constitution Will Come Up In Legislature, Court of
 Appeals Being One.

Appeals Being One. Montgomery, December 2L-(Special)- It is a source of qualification to Ala bamians to know that the mineral wealth of the state is not confined to the min eral district proper For many years the state geologist has been reporting on marls and phosp hattie deposits and in- sisting that some of them were sufficient l ly rich to warrant their use by the farm l CTS round about. The hope is by no means abandoned that deposits equal to l those of Florida and Tennessee will yet be found. Down in Marengo, as every l one knows, they are turning their beds l of rock into cement on a grand scale l Over the river from here in the edge of l Autauga county ochre has been mined and shipped in vast quantities. Now right here at Montgomery, in the sound l of the capitol clock, a great deposit of earth, out of which mineral paint will be made. is soon to be exploited and 1 put on the market. The story has been printed before of how Professor Carver, l the chemist at the Booker Washington school went out one day to look at a COW and picked up a common enough looking rock just beyond the suburb l known as Highland Park, took it home with him, tested it and pronounced 1t one of the most valuable deposits of l paint clays in the world. The owners ot this piece of land which spreads over several hundred acres are MT. Ava Fitz- patrick ana MT. J. T. Roberts, and they 1 have had enough of it turned into paint to know where they are "at' so to speak. They have had a whole house in Montgomery painted with 1t and have submitted it to dealers here who say they are paying $95 per ton for exactly the same stuff.
 The deposit lies about fifteen feet under l ground and is nine feet thick It is es- timated that there are 14,70O tons of 1t to the acre. and the dirt turns out little over 70 per cent of the paint. Verify, here is richness. Anywhere e;se on earth except Montgomery this thing would be exploited on big scale, but the owners say they have a good thing and propose to keep it in Montgomery pockets. Ma chinery for the purpose is simple and | modest company is being organized with tT'e expectation of developing big thing out of it. The exploration has not been extensive and there is really no telling how much of the ground around here Is underlaid with just such a strata.
 Court of Appeals.
 When the constitutional convention was 1 in session there was quite an interesting little discussion over the clause which | looks to the creation of an intermediate court of appeals. Undoubtedly there was some politics in it, but this is all too com mon to discount meritorious thing these days, and there has been sort of expec | tation that the gentlemen more particu- larly interested would likely have their way about it when the legislature met. Inquiry, however, develops the interesting situation that the supreme court is prac- tically up with it's business. No court could be expected to be nearer up. Fur 1 ther inquiry develops the further inter- esting fact that there has within the l last few years been a big falling off in the number of cases submitted. They used | to run nearer to seven hundred than to six hundred. Now they run less than five 1 hundred The decrease seems to be owing to the passage of the national bankrupt l law, which transfers so large a body of litigation connected with failures from the state to the Federal courts. This would seem to be a hard nut for the ad- vocates of a court of appeals to crack, l but there is no doubt that in order to keep up as they do, the Supreme court l judges have to work hard. 1t may not l seem wise to drive a willing horse to death. Hence the proposal that another judge be added to the Supreme court l bench, which would almost be decreasing l the work by a sixth.
 Carneeie's Visit.
 MT. Andrew Carnegie is going to Flor ida for trip, and on his northward flight in the spring he will stop over at Mont gomery CT route to Tuskegee, where he built a library for the Washington school l He will here see the building to which he gave $5O,000. Montgomery has had number of visits from eminent northern CTS who took this city in as part of a southern trip, with Tuskegee for the ob- 1 jective. Some of the citizens here think it fortunate to be so situated with ref erence to the philanthropic mecca of the south But there are others who don't care so much.
 Pretty Library Building.
 But speaking of MT. Carnegie suggests the remark that the library building here l is really going to be beauty. In the l earlier stages of the work on 1t there was quite general disappointment among the hundreds, and even thousands, of people who stopped to look through the gate in the big board fence around 1t. | The impression produced was one of smallness It looked small for $50,000 But as it has gotten up to the last story, and the ornamentation comes into view, there is no doubt left that it will be an imposing and artistic structure and quite big enough to hold all the books that there will be money to buy for many a year.
 There is a perfect flood of applicants for the two or three positions which will go along with the library, but there is a universal sentiment that Miss Laura El- l more has the first call for the best place. 1 She is the librarian at the present strug- gling little place on Dexter avenue which is called the Montgomery Public library and which has been established and kept going by the self sacrifice of a few per sons. A condition of the Carnegie gift is that the city is to give S5000 year in perpetuity and this insures an income sufficient to run the new enterprise on a creditable basis.
 A Quiet Christmas.
 No such quiet Christmas was ever 1 known as that through which the people ! Inf Montgomery have just passed. It was SO quiet, indeed, as to suggest some feel ing of uneasness lest the city was lack