The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-12-12
Cetter$ tO tI,e Gdftcr
The Negro a Bar to Progress.
Editor The Advertiser:

EQltOr Tne AdVertiSer:
 l read in yesterdays Advertiser an editorial expressing great satisfaction With the present condition of the negro in the South. as well as, a willingness for the negroes now living in the North to move back South. The Advertiser is usually right, and as 1t seems to me, is the great conservative force In this State guiding our people to right action. This writer was reared on a Southern plantation and he loves the soil. He never sees new barn built, house recovered, fence repaired or an improved method used in framing without a leap of the heart and a feeling that the day is coming when oar people will no longer be poor and downcast. Looking to the good of Alabama, did you ever think that the Presbyterian Church has been practically driven out of the country districts of Alabama, that the Episcopal Church has never tried to enter there; and that. the Methodist and Baptist Churches are barely holding their own? Did you ever think that the only places in the State where country schools are Kept up, is, fin counties like Clay, where there are very few negroes? Did you ever think that lands in Ala bama, going beging at $10 an acre, any where in the North or West, would be worth $75 per acre?
 Did you ever think that we make less than 200 pounds of lint cotton per acre on land which properly titled would make one bale per acre?
 Olu you ever tnlnk that you can take any of our red lands, blow 1t deep and SOW in rye after fertilizing, and 1t will make $10 worth of rye, $10 worth of rye straw; and if sowed in peas after the rye is off. $10 worth of pea vine hay; then. the next year, will make one-half bale of cotton per acre worth 80 at present prices?
 Did you ever think that the man who attempts to raise rye as above and puts negro to run his self binder and his mower, will loose in breakage more than he gains?
 Did you ever think the reason why you have no country churches is because the negro tills the land?
 Did you ever think that the reason we have no country schools is because the land owner shoves the poor white man off to the hills and rents the good lands to negroes?
 cream of our white laboring people go West, Is because our land owners will neither rent to him, or if they do, they put him in a house not fit for mule stable?
 Did you ever think that if we land owners built good houses like unto those owned by our cotton mills, we could get good white tenants, who would supply the schools with children and the churches make more per acre, and would have on them a population willing and able to buy same at advsncing prices? We young men of the South must put pencil to paper before we act, and when we act must look to results. We must cut all this sentimental stuff out of our natures just as if 1t were cancerous growth.
 This writer votes the Republican ticket solely because he thinks Republican methods and principles are for the best interests of this country, but he sees that the ignorant negro is an incubus and the idea of saying as our fathers would say, ''by gad sir. the negro is the best labor in the world sir" is thing of the past. We landowners are today seeing a cot ton famine because we cannot let our families live in the country.
 H, l.. McElderry.