The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-04-28
ATLANTA PLAYS THE
 COAL BARONS TODAY
AZ PoWELL'S TEAM COMES TO BIRMINGHAM FOR FIRST TIME THIS SEASoN-CLARK PITCHES FOR o'BRIEN's CLUB.

Atlanta comes to Birmingham today for l the first time this season and the ap- pearance of Alb Powelrs new team is awaited with considerable curiosity by the local wise ones on baseball.
 So far Atlanta has won three games and lost two MT. Powell walloped the Montgomery aggregation for three straight and in turn fell down for two before Newt Fisher. Montgomery then gets back by jumping on Birmingham for two out of three. Todays result is therefore watched with much interest. Ginger Clark will pitch for Birming- ham but it is not known who will officiate | in similar capacity for Atlanta It is believed, however that one Mir McMeekin l will probably do the job. The game, as | usual, will be called at 3.3O o'clock. --~-@--~--~-~~~--~>-->-~~~~ ~~~~7-~~--~~~-~-------- discussing the very subject that I am 1 discussing now--the necessity of uni- versal compulsory training of every child | in the state. Make negro go to school and tax us for it? one man asked Yes, we all agreed that this was an economic necessity. Then the president smiled and ' 1 opinion boldly in public he would lose his place.
 " Do your trustees differ with you? I asked.
 No; many of them at least, agree with me. But they would be afraid of public opinion. The principal newspaper | here would hound them
 Public Opinion.
 You would have supposed then that | the editor was master of thought there But the editor held the same opinion that we all held. He had told me so. He too, was afraid of public opinion; and he would not have written his own convic- l tions in his paper.
 | Public opinion, therefore, was not the ! thought of educated men in that commit nifty, but the blind push of untrained ! men, And these thoughtful men were not free because of the mass of unthink- l ing men about them. Always an un- | trained mob will control thought if the | people be not trained. In an untrained ] democracy low minds will lead and an organized howl will lift demagogues to | power.
 This Is the reason why other parts of the republic have taken intellectual lead ership from us. This is the reason that l our kinsmen across the sea and our kins- men across the Potomac regard us as | problem Let us face this fact frankly and finch not. We have suffered too | long because the way to freedom of opin- ion was not clear But it is clear now. It Is the very way that Jefferson himself | in his own free thought, pointed out-by the training of all the people, In this | way the south will again come to it's ! own, and public opinion here will get the | fun service of our best minds and most generous natures
 ] Tt seems hard lot that we of all men should have suffered an eclipse of free | thought. Our forefatners sunnosed that they had made this blessing secure for all time. It was Jefferson's great dream. Yet We, who ought to nave been born in- to the full blaze of intellectual liberty. are the only English-spealsing men to whom it is now denied.
 The South.
 But a change Is coming-faster than | most men know except those of LIS who l i've away from the old home and ire i quently come back to it. The truth Is l the south is now the land of rapid l change Men often speak of it as if it l were an old land-as small part of it is 1 They speak of 1t as if 1t were settled bv a population that had firmly fixed meth l ods ot thought and unyielding institu- l tions. We ourselves sometimes so think of 1t. In fact, we have so often been de- l scribed wrong that we sometimes forget 1 of being a problem.
 What is the south? What is Alabama for instanee? Old men are still living who came here by wagons, to a wilder ness. This busy city has been wholly built within my easy memory. There are today only thirty-five persons per l square mile in this state If 1t were as ] densely settled as the Netherlands there would be as many persons in Alabama as | there are now in twelve southern states | all the old slave states-Virginia, North I Carolina South Carolina, Georgia Flor | ida, Alabama, Mississippi Louisiana | Texas Tennessee and the border states of Kentucky and Maryland If every l acre of land in Alabama were as profit ably cultivated as the Island of Jersey is | its food products would feed about half | the people in the United States. By | fair economic measure, Alabama is yet a wilderness. Man has hardly made a permanent impression on it.
 l And the changes not onlp physi- cal. There are changes in thought. The day before yesterday Gas we measure the I life of nation) pioneers were coming | here. Yesterday (as we measure the life 1 of nation) the sons of these pioneers gathered at your capital and sought to make an end of long trouble by setting | up a new government. That was only | yesterday. But today men here have a
 
 Everything. I say, here. therefore is rapidly changing-oecupation methods thought. Nothing is fixed We have, in | fact, a less developed land and people | than any other men of our race in all | their farfung lines of settlement and in- l 6lstry. And a few strong men now may make their impress on the land and on the people for all time to come. | For this reason we cannot, in spite | of our disinheritance, regard ourselves as | unfortunate. We are, in fact if we have | the mettle for great task, the most | fortunate of men. Those that sit In soft places and discuss academic propositions l (and mistake self-indulgence in criticism for the intellectual life) are welcome to | their ease, We would not swap birth | rights with them. If we have a rough | task, 1t is a high task. When it is done 1 we shall leave the world better than we found it; and. while we are doing it | we shall have the joy of constructive &C., 1 tivity We look forward to golden age that we may surely hasten. not back to | one that never was. And thought Is every year becoming freer-on great pub | lie subjects and even in the churches
 Time Coming.
 "Nor Is this all A time is coming, men of the south and it is coming before we 1 die when other and even graver economic problems will press on our national life l for solution. They press already. They are new problems and no government | has yet met them. When we grapple