The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-10-03
Eetter$ tO tDe Gdftcr
Has Fun With Opponents.

As imagination has occupied such a prominent part in the discussion of the proposition to erect an office building on the fountain site, may be excused for indulging mine for the edifcation l Of your readers:
 | Mine pictures a conference between proposition, with Progress" in the chair.
 Progress"-Gentlemen we are called together for the purpose of reviewing against the office building proposition, and to see if we can detect the reason why they have failed to stem the tide of popular opinion which is leaning 1 more and more to the other side of the | question. When my Star" shone upon the public thought they would be dag zled by its brilliancy, and that no other argument would be necessary but to the public 1t proved a meteor which attract ed momentary attention and then dis appeared. All that I accomplished by my Star was to give Real Progress" an opportunity to dub me Star Gazer." Gentlemen. the meeting is now open of you"
 Mir. Liddell--My experience. gentle
 men. is similar to that of our Chairman; do not mind acknowledging to you that my effort to be funny was a boom erang, and that instead of my Leaning Tower" proving an argument against the ofice building, 1t has proved d missile in the hands of my friends to shoot fun at me; I shall be satisfied If l am not dubbed the Leaning Tower" have written for The Advertiser regard ing the beautifylng of our city I im- agined had educated the aesthetic tastes of our people to a point where they would follow me without question, but when I attempted to throw a halo of sentiment around the old Fountain, they got the laugh upon me. The Evening Times held the water nymphs eN1 n1. rk~ ~af-A pool as a Mosquito pond" and I must confess that the stagnant water In the pool and the stream of mosquitoes fly ing therefrom does give one the idea unfortunate allusion to foreign capital reacted upon me, for the people most given to sentiment are the ones who are most anxious to improve our city with outside capital. and when I threw out the hint that no alien need apply, saw at once that their sentiment was on the wane. Snother argument that I ad- vanced. and which thought unanswer- passing to and from the building were liable to be run over by electric cars When I made that argument, I forgot to look upon the Square, crowded with cotton wagons, and, very much to my chagrin, Greater Montgomery" point ed out to the public the fallacy of my argument. I do not wish to consume U. T R." "' '0D' '''"'' '' "'i S''' way '0
 "J R."-Gentlemen, I was much i'm pressed with Mir. Jackson's plea for the fountain and could not see him routed without coming to his rescue, and, af- ter emphasizing it's beauties, as he de- scribed them. added the icicle feature; thought while this hot spell was upon us the thought of icicles hanging to the fountain would captivate our people. and that they would rather forego the office building than give them up 1t the same time, I thought this a good kf building committee Since my card ap- peared in print however, I must con- fess that the icicles have given me the shivers. for the strong rays from the Sun of Public Opinion has melted them and I stand in mortal fear that may be called upon to compare my public spirit with that of the office building committee. against whom 1 made
 "Progress'-We will now hear from our latest champion, More Progress" but must a1mit that SO far our mova ment has been more of retrograde than
 More Progress"-I trust that our worthy chairman will excuse mo for characterizing his Star as 2 "Woggle- bug" but at the time l was writing I had in mind the public's conception of his building. and was thereby led into the error; I apologize to him for thC mistake. When the Idea was advanced that Court Square was the only place in Montgomery for an office building, could not keep quiet, and my fear that the fountain site might be devoted to that purpose caused me to suggest thlt the city could. with equal propriety, lease Dexter Avenue for the same pur- pose,
 "Progress"-Is not More Progress afraid that he has oVerstepped the mark? The fountain occupies but very small part of Court Square, and none Of its streets, and we will have to admit that the office building would not obstruct the view of Dexter Avenue, but would add to the beauty Of that thorouShfcre, standing as a monument pointing to 1t, Another mistake that we have made is the assumption that the office building committee have statel that the fountain is the only site for an Cffice building, while. as a matter of fact their only claim is that it is the only one that appeals to the foreign captaIist that they have been enabled to present, that was any way within reason, and they scored a strong point when they said that we cannot expect foreign capitalists to build us an office building in a side street when 1t does not appeal to our home capital fists. We can admit this among our selves, but it will not d2 to acknowl- edge 1t on the outside.
 about our Fresh air argument" I have heen doing some thinking along that line today, and I am afraid that we have overlooked the fact that the tall building would catch the cooler strata