The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-03
Congressman Tells of Products
 Affected By Bill
URGENT NEEDS OF SOUTH
Agricultural and Mineral Products of Alabama Are Shown By MT. Clay ton, Who Sepaks of Re-
 cent Progress.

Washington, April 2.-(Special. .)-Repre- sentative Clayton of Alabama spoke in the House today against the pending Payne bill. In the course of his speech be stated that the south under free in- stitutions has grown, developed and null tiplied more than she possibly could have done under the old conditions of slavery.
 As a son of an old shareholder, as son of confederate major general I want to say to the sons of the abolition ists of Massachusetts you in your effort to free the black man did more than you thought you were doing. You freed the south industrially, and the cotton spinners of Massachusetts, the iron mas ters of Pennsylvania know that the sons of the abolitionists are now compelled to compete in industrial enterprises with the sons of the south, the sons of the old shareholders in the leading industrial enterprises of our county. (Applause.)
 Tn the old days that mighty city of Birmingham was but hamlet, and Jones valley in which Birmingham is situated was poor farm where grew scrubby corn and what in our vernacular we call bumblebee cotton, that bumblebee could sit down and suck the top bios som of the cotton stalk. The iron and the coal lay sleeping, untouched and well nigh undiscovered in the bosom of mother earth.
 Now, thank God, under modern insti- tutions, under what the abolitionists never dreamed of, there is industrial freedom and unparalleled opportunities. with the superior southern climate and coal and iron and limestone for fluxing. side by side with the water, in the abund ance of nature God lavishly furnished. That great industrial region of Alabama fixed the price of pig iron for the world. (Applause.) It can produce it more cheap ly than it can be produced anywhere else. Under the providence of God the same progress has been made in the manufacture of cotton.
 ''In spite of republican discrimination, the myriads of spindles that hum in the south are coming in competition with the spindies of New England, so that state, not as an irridescent dream, but as a sol- emn fact. that the spindles of New Eng land no longer hum in their music in the production of the coarser cotton fabrics. lHey cannot produce She6t1ngS and duck and the coarser cotton in competition with the southern mills. And by the irony of fate, In spite of legislation hostile or with legislation friendly, as the case may be, in the mighty sweep of time in the unin- terrupted and uninterruptible march of the progress of that south section the day will come when the New England cotton spinner will be forced to abandon his spindles in the east and come to the cot ton fields of the south, where the plant blooms in whiteness and opens in snowy perfection in the autumn, where he can save transportation, where a better cli- mate, and where better conditions prevail and where he is not harrassed by legisla- tive restrictions.
 AS an evidence of that I am told that in the one town of Huntsville, Ala, our brethren from Massachusetts have already come with $6,000,000 of their money because 1t furnishes a more profitable investment than in the icy regions of Massachusetts. And I want to say to the young man. re- publican or democrat, of the north or west, cease talking about going west, where the railroad and ship companies and immigration agencies have for years been taking the great flood of immigra- ton, but go SOuth."