The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-14

~
 following address at the re- N cent banquet given in Wash ington in honor of Justice Lurton-ef the supreme court
 "r hardly think it just, on so pleas ant an occasion, to have attention ad- dressed to subject which disturos the noise and wrecks the calm. There are times when even a lawyer, thougit standing before judges, has right to be happy and unalarmed.
 "Rut A few months ago l saw much in the life of the south to dispel the darkness and the clouds. I saw my peo- nle unafraid of the future, and every man who owed a dollar was willing to forget it and let it be forgotten. sa" prohibitionists passing laws that oe- tracted from no mans ability to get drink. I saw clearly all republicans holding and the balance hoping TOT an office. and every democrat was proud and pleased that MT. Bryan had been smitten with a flash of silence saw a happy and contented people, willing to neglect their own affairs to give at tention to their neighbors'.
 Unto this Eden crept MT. Rockefei- ,er with a scheme to filch from my section it's hallowed hookworm. l have hrooded much over this atrocity and have come to regard it as an act so wanton and objectionable that u brands him as lost to social obliga- lions. and with heart really bent on mischief.
 of he had craved and coveted that worm. if he had loved and longed Tor it. we would have opened our homes and hearts to him, for l say to you tonight that no man with as much real money as MT. Rockefeller ever yet went south without finding every home open and every heart and hope beating high.
 "From the day when the rhetoricai suggestion about the wonderful hospi- tality of the south took It's rightful place with kindred aphorisms, we, or the south. have extended ardent wei come to every man with money, having nothing to enliven us except the most nebulous notion that we might sep arate him from some of it.
 we have welcomed the wealthy with no plans more definite than seven-up; we have bade them good-by with noth- ing to cheer us save the unreasoning hope that made Micawber's life so beau tjful. And you know and I know that greater kindness to strangers hath no section than this; 1t permitteth the rich alien to get away with his alien riches. We welcome almost everybody. Why, six months ago we welcomed re- publican President, and, in passing, I'll say that 1t looks like we are never go- ing to have any other kind.
 since MT. Bryan got the hookworm in his vocal organs and Richard Croker took the veil, 1t is hardly worth while to be democrat.
 "Reverting to MT. Rockefeller's inva- sion of our traditional rights-and while the south is not so particular about its rights, 1t is foolish about its traditions-I say to you that it was not because he loved or lusted for the worm, but because of his insatiate de- sire to crush something.
 Just why he should have turned his evil eye upon the south and proposed to annihilate natures sure antidote to effort, I do not know. We never sold any coal oil. And hope that fact will obtrude itself upon his conscience, be- fore the final tragedy, and cause the still small voice--if there are any still, small voices left-to beseech him: "Oh, Mister. spare that ,worm!'
 Eff he met that .hookworm in the fair field of fight competing with 1t for su- premacy-man to worm-our rage and resentment would not have mounted so high. But he subsidized scientists and inarshaled the myrmidons of medicine, applied to that worm the hideous epithet l uncinariasis,' and with no search war rant from on high proposes to forage our forms and probe our persons, and l
 tell you tonight that the peace of unl-
 versal man is placed in, peril.
 a"Is. do not speak for the worm, but for the world. That worm makes a man
 subside it stops the soaring purpose and makes the wild wave of tumult be as
 the still waters. If there was ever a
 time in human; history when the hook
 worm could serve a God-ordafned end, il is today. Dr.. Stiles. one of Rockefeller's
 Mamelukes of Medicine. says that just | one little worm renders a man incapable
 of performing any great exerton. The
 crying need of the hour, then, is that
 worm.
 "If one lhookworm had been placed in
 Thomas W. Lawson before he went to
 finance his frenzy. that cup would have
 surely passed from us. No man gan say
 that this small object of Rockefeller's $ wrath. if well and wisely used, might
 not deaden. though it could not destroy.