The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-07-18

iemS Which Tor nfty years nad divloeu our nation and estopped its progress. and which must either be answered or laid to rest. Out of that fiery trial Alabama came with her sisters, crushed, sorrow stricken. impoverished, but. thank God! not pauperized. From her, as from them all, was pressed the groan, but never was wrung the whine. I rejoice that in all her desolation and her woe she never crooked the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning." For all the wonderful recuperation which makes her a world-mark today. she owes no man; she acknowledges obligation to God alone. and stands ready to transmit to her children an unincumbered estate of honor. self-sufficiency and manhood.
 A generation has bent its energy to re- building its homes and restoring its fall en fortunes. With this work well done 1t stands before a wide open gate of op- portunity and destiny.
 Besides the difficulties which today she shares with her sister States. Alabama has others peculiar to herself. Geograph- ically, the State Is clearly divided into three distinct belts differing widely in in- dustry and interest. In the, North are the hills. smoking with coke ovens, yawn- ing with pit-shafts. and ringing and hum- ming with machinery. Into this district has poured the intelligent and the ignor- ant from every quarter of the world. On my way here, I sat as guest at a table in an Alabama city an infant in years but giant in strength whose industrial hum Is heard round the world. At the same table sat fifteen young men. of whom one was from Nova Scotia. another from Wisconsin. another from Michigan. another from Virginia, another from North Carolina. Without, in other parts of that and adjacent cities, thousands of Poles, Hungarians, Dutch-aH the motley crew of a mining district-were waiting with bated breath the "hxing of the scale." As into the Birmingham fur naces are rolled the ore and the coke and the limestone from which are drawn the iron and steer for the world, so out of this seethinS mass of heterogeneous hu- manity is to be drawn American citizen ship. In all that district. school authori- ties are anxious today. dependent on the same wage scale" to decide whether scores shall occupy, or hundreds shall crowd their school rooms for the coming year.
 In the South are the magnificent reach es of pine forests over which until re- gently roamed herds of sheep and cattle numbering thousands. The former inhab- itants. requiring great areas of virgin for est for their ranges, lived an isolated. care-free. happy-go-lucky life. without aspiration and absolutely satisfied with their lot. They asked of the great world but one boon, to be let alone. Into these wilds came the North Caroiinians, with tar on their heels. and boxed and scared vast empires of these forests. The Georgians came. those Yam kees of the South. with their thrift and push. and set the insatiate teeth of the saw. more greedy than Utgard-Lokd. to consume those lordly pine trunks and send their products over land and sea. -,I.t1. 1~. E,- the horticulturist are making ''the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.''
 Stretching across the State with an average width of thirty miles is the prairie belt" of famous fertility, the home of the cotton plant and the negro. This was the celebrated old-time Ala bama where lordly aristocrats looked out from palatial homes on broad domains alive with happy slaves. Owls, bats and negroes are in those homes today, while the white population is massed in town and city for protection and society. This belt, together with the different indus tries, keeps the white belts apart and renders action difficult.
 In the fearful reconstruction days, when the vultures swooped greedily down upon the mangled and bleeding body po- | litic, 1t became a necessity to raise home bulwark against their insatiate rapacity. To prevent the entire spoilation and final ruin of the State, a clause was inserted | in the Constitution of 1875 forbidding the imposition of any local tax. This emergent measure became an affiiction | when the necessity which called it forth | had passed away. The revised Constitu- tion of last year restored in a measure this rightful authority to the people with | the county as the unit and one mill as the limit. An active campaign is in near prospect to arouse popular enthusiasm and stir the masses to the exercise of this prerogative. As the Legislature Is vested with power of amendment. 1t is hoped that under a more highly cultivated sentiment the unit will in course of time be diminished and the limit extended. | On Alabama soil the most gigantic ex- pertinent in the history of the world for the uplifting of a degraded race has its place. To the Negro Industrial School at Tuskegee, thousands of thoughtful eyes, both North and South, are turned
 No white man will yet presume to pre- dict the issue. The white mans bur den' is on Alabama.
 1 In the days gone by. Alabama looked abroad for her educators and instruc' tors In the cos and 70's, as in the times previous, she received apostles of pro- gross from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Many of these having served | tnelf own BeneTdtlOn Dy the VIII OI OOO have fallen on sleep and lie in the em. brace of their adopted mother. A few of us are yet permitted to toll on. re-
 joicing in the greening of the education
 al field, and trusting that when the Harvest Home" is sung our work will approve us.
 But a new army of worthy recruits | from among her own sons has enlisted Tn the blessed cause. From the State University. her Polytechnic College, hel Normal, Agricultural, Industrial and De nominational schools and colleges. anC | from a host of other less known, but
 scarcely less efficient. institutions. the ranks are filling every year. Some oi these have already matured and risen tc leadership. The President of the State i University, of the Polytechnic College the Southern University, of the State | Normal College, of the Alabama Confer ence Female College. of the Girls Indus
 trial School, and many of the superin- tcadents of the city graded schools are ali Alabama boys. the output of Alabama schools. Alas, the great reaper has thrown his scythe into this newer har' vest, and we mourn a Graham gone, laid low in mid career of usefulness.
 The public school system of Alabama is steadily advancing in organization and | efficiency. While ideals still tower high as mountain peaks before us, our prog ress Is full of encouragement and ouI prospect bright with hope. To the ques' tion from her sister States, What oi