The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-02-28
City Takes Place of Hill
 and Frog Pond.
Greedy Common Carriers, in Their wild Desire to Make Money, Also Have Made Money for Farmer, Merchant and
 Lumber Man.
By VIII IT. sheeban.


 Railroads do not spend all their time expressing the people. They do not devote all their energies to, controlling the politics of Alabama, bribing legis- lators, browbeatihg State officials and working the Judicial wires. $
 They are not engaged all the time in evading taxes, watering stocks and concocting schemes for defrauding the honest yeonianry-"the common peepuf --if you please. t5.
 It is quite the fashion to believe these of them. It is quite the fashion to talk largely and loudly of the wrongs they have heaped upon the su- pine and helpless State of Alabama be- fore the agitators woke up and offered unseihshly to take the rights of the people under their care for consider ation. for an office with fat salary attachment. S
 Some people might not really believe it, but .if is nevertheless a fact that railroads do a great many things be- sides heap indignities upon foolish people who for more than quarter of a century have gone on year after year selecting as their rulers and their judges the pliant tools of railroad cor porations--as the anti-railroad agita- tors would have everybody believe.
 They do other things. They build towns, they develop sections. build up States and contribute more brains and money to general advancement and progress than any other agency. And if this, be treason, make the most of it..
 Now, If it had not been for the rail- road, Thomasville would have been an unoccupied hillside and a depressing frog pond But the Southern Railroad built its line from Selma to Mobile and the hillside and frog pond bloomed into the hustling, thrifty, town of Thomas ville, with an assured present and a promising future. If one had to do 1t under compulsion he might name half a hundred Alabama towns that came into being in the same way. The rail- roads bring tn m.
 The Then and the Now.
 Now. this statement about Thomas ville is not a, careless assertion made after a few hours stay in the place. In fact, it is not original. It Is a state- ment made upon the authority of some of ThomasvilIe's business men who have known it since 1t was in the early stages of infancy; since the time when the centre of the present town was so muddy that in wet weather 1t took a team of oxen. to pull an empty wagon over what is now the principal business street of the city.
 But the whistle of the first locomo- tive meant more to Thomasville than the first rub on his lamp meant to the lucky Aladdin. And how many other towns are under the same sort of an obligation to the railroads?
 Oh, nos the railroads didn't do 1t all just to see the town grow. They want ed to make more dollars. And the men who came to Townsville to open a store and sell goods didn't come to uxxr bO lat nf 6a Tbav came to make money. Both have made money-the merchant and the railroad.
 The railroads didn't make the dol lars for the merchant, but they did give him the chance to make them. The railroads furnished him with the oppor- tunity and the merchant did the rest. In spite of all the heinous crimes of the Alabama railroads, this partnership between the common carriers and the merchants in developing and in build ing up has been profitable to both-to the merchant no less than to the rail- road. It has worked not only to their good, but it has worked to the good of Alabama That is to be remembered, even when we are demanding that the railroads shall be crucihed.
 And so far as one man of average in- formation is able to tell, the railroads are not running around, stirring up SIGlI0 Dy IeIlinS the IdTmeTS dIlQ the other consumers that the merchants too much for their goods that their profits are entirely too high, and unless something is done about 1t. the whole fabric of civilization as we'll as the plan of salvation will be utterly destroyed.
 Some Startling Phases.
 And when a man sits down to think about 1t real hard, the situation pre- sents some startling phrases. He hap pens to think all of d sudden that the three, four or five men who are loudest in their denunciation of the railroads, | who are most insistent that they shall be elected to office, are the holders of some of the biggest private fortunes of the State, They are among Alabamt's l richest men. And they are business men, shrewd business men, who worked | hard and made all their money
 They made their money and they made 1t under the iniquitous conditions | that prevail in Alabama. They piled | mp big fortunes, no matter if the raiI- l roads were debauching the State and l robbing right and left They were merchants, nearly every one of them, | the goods they bought and all the | these despised and grasping railroads | to and from their stores.
 And 1t does seem that conditions | can't be so very bad, that the railroads | are not stealing so very much, when | the industry and shrewdness of these | men are able to accumulate such large |