The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-07-31
THE ALABAMA PRESS ExcUR-
 GT0N


 Secretary. He has been Secretary for a number of years. and has a great fond ness for getting up excursions to various parts of the country. The Advertiser can not say off hand just how many he has conducted.
 For some years these excursions have | been more or less criticized as discredita- | ble to the Alabama Press, because a large number. if not the majority, of those going on the trips. have not been | bonafide newspaper people. At each an- nual meeting of the Association these excursions have been discussed. and vari- ous resolutions have been passed to put a stop to the evil But these resolutions have not been effective. They have not been respected by all the members, and the officials of the. Association have ap- parently not exerted themselves at all to bring about the desired reform.
 The Advertiser had a representative on this last trip in the person of it's City Editor, Mir. Bruce Kennedy. It has not | been possible for some years past to Dst an official list of those who actually went on these trips. Mir. Kennedy, therefore. was instructed before he left here to get a complete list of names of all persons who were on this excursion. He states that he asked Mir. Rountree nearly every day for the two weeks for this list, but he could never get it. He had finally to make it up as best he could from hotel registers, Canadian newspaper lists and memory.
 In the first of Mir. Kennedy's letters was printed as accurate a list of persons on the excursion as was possible. This showed a great many persons who were generally recognized as not being con nected with newspapers. He said that while there were about 1855 persons in the party, not more than forty were bona-fide newspaper workers. There were about fifty persons from Birmingham alone.
 This letter naturally attracted great deal of attention. When MT. Kennedy reached home, he went to the office of Captain J Nj. Falkner. District Attorney of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, who was deeply interested in the Associa- tion's trip, because he had issued many of the passes for the party over his Road to Evansville, Ind, and return with great reluctance. Captain Falkner furnished for publicstio In The Advertiser list of those to whom he had issued specificf by Secretary Rountree. In his second letter about the trip Mir. Kennedy used this list and pointed out many names of persons to whom passes were issued who were not on the trip. Yet there were scores of persons on the excursion to whom Captain Falkner had not issued passes at all!
 The result of these publications is the correspondence in this issue between MT. Rountree and Captain Falkner. The lat ter is naturally indignant at the way he and his road have been treated by many members of the Association and particu- larly by Secretary Rountree. who Is the active executive officer. He writes an admirable letter. Mir. Rountree ad- mits that he has done the Louisville and | Nashville road wrong. but apparently he ! does not realize that he has wronged the road from Evansville to Chicago and the Canadian line, to say nothing of the fraud he has aided in perpetrating upon the hos pitable Canadian cities. They spent thou sands of dollars in entertainments Of the Alabama press, only to discover that about three-fourths of those upon whom were lavishing money were not newspa- per people.
 As Captain Falkner points out. this evil has been going on for years but :his year | 1t was worse than ever. The Alabama Press Association has passed resolution after resolution against 1t, but Secretary ] Rountree has done little or nothing to | carry out those resolutions. On the con-
 trary. he has apparently done all he could
 to get up the biggest excursions he could,
 no matter how much he violated the rules
 of the Association. or how much ne dis regarded the appeals of railroad officials. | Of course. he is not entirely to blame |: 1 the other officers and the Executive Com mittee are culpable also, for he wrote l Captain Falkner that the Executive Com
 mittee had passed on the lists of names l
 seems to have dominated the whole man.
 agement. and is unquestionably mainly
 responsible. It has been under him that
 this evil has grown and developed steadily
 to its present proportions.
 Now why has Mir. Rountree been SO &C.,
 tive in this matter? Why has he for
 years worked up these big excursions,
 and over-ridden the constitution and by
 laws of the Association and the proprie-
 ties of the case? Can it be possible that
 he has made money out of these trips? The Advertiser does not charge that such l Is the case. because 1t has no proof, but
 1t does say that he could have done so
 if he is as shrewd a manager as his long
 experience ought to have made him. Let
 us examine some figures.
 Every person who went on this excur-
 sion had to pay in advance to Secretary
 Rountree the sum of $29. This was for
 the purpose of paying the Pullman Car | Company for the use of the four sleepers on the trip for fourteen days. Now there were at least lS5 persons who went on the
 excursion. Mir. Kennedy says that nt one | point on the trip a count was
 made by a Canadian railroad off,
 fcial who found that instead of the IFS he had contracted for, there were Il over that number, or 1SS. But put 1t at 1855. That number multiplied by $29 makes