The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-05-14
HY wILL T. sHEEHAN.

WILL
 Prattville, May 13.-(Special Corres- pondence. )--Dilapidated and weather stained, an old mill leans over the clear, brown water of Autauga Creek not far from the old dead town of Washington. Two stories high it Is, lifted far above the creek on brick pill lars. In former days it was a preten- fious structure, but its glory has de- parted and its windows are dark and sightless.
 A sloaping wooden dam restraints the waters of the creek until they rush around in a mill race beneath the mill and among the pillars. Entwined among the pillars are shaftings and machinery which on rare days, even at this time. the waters from the creek are set to running. On such days the hum and the whirr of the old mill rises above the singing rush of the water from around the dam and the old mill would seem to stir itself from decay and misfortune and appear to protest that it was just as active and as vigorous as ever before and If any, body thought differently he was very much mistaken.
 But the fate of the old mill is writ ten. The ivy climbs the brick pillars and the end is not many years away The flat bit of tableland that stretch es from the creek bank towards the west holds ominous warnings to the old structure. On either side of the sandy road which circles by the old mill and cuts across the flat there stand a half dozen decaying houses. The windows are falling away and the roofs of some are about to crush in.
 And that which gives the old mill keen interest, that which sets it apart for notice and for comment, is the his tory of its first five years. For this old mill marks tho spot where for a time camped Alabama's first great Captain of Industry, Daniel Pratt. Here first came Daniel Pratt in the in- auguration of that career which has wrought so deep an influence on the commercial, the industrial and, for that matter, the political history of the State. Five years he lived here and then two and a half miles he moved up the creek to found the town or Prattyille, the vigorous town of foun- ries, of factories, of machine shops. Of looms and of. spindles. These five years gave the old mill a distinction which will be of the spot when the mill will have crumbled to pieces.
 From the day the great Captain of Industry moved forward from this Temporary camp to establish his head quarters and his domain in that wild piece of swamp land which he trans formed into the beautiful little town or Prattville, the career of the old mill has been the career of hundreds of other Alabama mills perched upon the hundreds of brooks and creeks which murmur through the State. Two thirds of century have elapsed since then. Prattville is one of the important manu- facturing centers of the State. And the old mill that Daniel Pratt left-it is only an old mill decaying on the banks of a creek. A thriving factory town and a few dismanteled houses in an old field. Here's contrast which tells It's own story and teaches It's own lesson.
 The most forcible truth that grows out of this contrast is In itself text for an eloquent sermon on the possi- pilities in one mans life, in one mans effort. What Prattvil1e is now and more, too, the old mill could have been. Not of itself, for when the brain and the energy that would have made it's future glorious were removed to an- other theatre of action the old mill passed into state of innocuous des- uetude and the new field wherein the talents and the brain had their play grew richer and more prosperous. II was the man, the one man, who made tho difference there at this old mill now known as Montgomery's mill The water power is almost if not equal to that which has made Prattville great