The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-11-11
The Rountree Matter.

TO the Public:
 As one of the members of the Alabama Press association charged by J. A. Roun- tree as having within twelve months sold his my) railroad transportation" of which he says The has absolute and indubitabe proof in writing" I cannot assent without protest to the disposition he proposes in his card published in your Sundays issue 10 make of it. I prompt ly pronounced the charge as unutterably false, as being without scintilla of evil dence to sustain it, and challenged him to publish the evidence which he said he had in writing. and proffered to bear all the expense of such publication. The public well knows that had he evidence to sustain that charge he would have promptly accepted that challenge, not only to convict me of the charge made, but especially to confound and degrade me by showing myself to be what know him to be, malicious falsifer.
 He says in his card that he will not take up a special and separate newspa- per controversy with each one whom he has charged with offenses. and that he will take no further notice of them until the time comes for his full justifica- ton CD" newspaper controversy is certainly not sought by any reputable journalist with a person like him. but publication ofrthe facts to sustain the charges he has made against them in the newspapers. His proposed step Is p1iearuhla al ba af pt,lXy of a conscious, but in this instance of self-confessed guilt. He knows that there is no justification for him; that there can be no trial, for he has no de- fense He has confessed to pocketng thousands and thousands of dollars of ill-gotten gains, dishonorably obtained under the guise of his late office, anu before the Investigating committee it was concusyely proven by evidence that he did not attempt to question or deny that he had swindled the railroads by inn properly obtaining transportation for his personal financial ends These were the published charges a anst him. He made no defense, for he had no defense. He never will have a defense His recourse to his consistently vaunted 'constitu- tional rights will give him no defense eight months hence any more than they will eight years hence
 An honest honorable man charged with vile and heinous offenses, if innocent would not plead "consttutional rights" to delay his final vindicatien." If there is evidence to establish his innocence, it Is in existence now, and it is more avail able now than it possibly can be months or years hence. Yet Mir Rountree seems to prefer to remain under the disgrace and stigma of the offenses of which he stands charged than to promptly attempt to establish his innocence, and brazenly proposes to drag others down into the stench and mire in which lie founders and grovels and keep them there for nearly year without opportunity of vim dication.
 This is too glaringly inhuman, too out rageously unjust, not only to myself and the others against whom he has made charges, and who deny guilt, but against Rountree himself. who admits his guilt for it simply prolongs the agony and re- morse under which he now suffers, and for one, l reiterate, l protest. He charges me in the public press with a despicable and detestable offense. He asserts that he possesses the written evil dence of it. so that it is immediately available. Whatever my confreres simi- larly charged may do, I demand to be confronted in the press and before the world with that evidence, and, to make my eonfounding and ignominy more ab- ject and humiliatng in case he produces such evidence, l reiterate my statement that he in making such charge IS guilty of a wiful, unmitigated, ineXcus- able and malicious falsehood.
 VIM. H. H. HUDSON. Bessemer. November 9, 1903.