The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-02
TOM LONG WRITES
 ON RAGLAND SCHOOL
Tells in Vigorous Fashion About Action of Certain
 People Against Him


 In your issue August 30th. under a spe- cial from Nashville. Tennessee, you gave the first information that a s5,OO0O0O in- dustrial school that day was located by the Southern Bureau of Education at Ragland, and that ex-Senator Wat Brown and myself were elected as new members on the board of trustees. l wired you from Nashville on the same date, 2 a. m. stating briefly why I refused to accept, after having been elected as member of the board of trustees. This wire reach ed you after your paper had gone to press, consequently, short statemeN might be interesting.
 Only two points and both of them in Alabama, stood any chance to secure the location of this school. This could be plainly seen the minute we appeared be- fore the locating board at Nashville on August 27th. Jasper made by far the best offer for the school and the entire Walk CT and Winston county delegation are united in their opinion that we lost in competition with Ragland, owing to the fact that the last legislature of Alabama appropriated s500O0 for a boys industrial SCHOOL to De lUCdLeu dl nag loho. f9 friends of Ragland sometime ago pub lished and openly advocated the consoli- dation of the two schools at that point, to-wit: The $5.000,00O proposed to be es- tablished by northern philanthropists and 1000 recently appropriated by the Ala bama legislature as above set forth, thereby hoping to divert a gift from the state of Alabama from the original source intended so that the aid of the state might eventually go to the new school to oe established. Such arguments, prom ises or publications were wholly unfair and we so stated to the board Tusca- loosa had as much right to enter the field as our competitor, proposing con- solidation with the proposed school, thus holding out hope that the $3o0'W0 gwen by the last legislature to the University of Alabama could in this way be secured for the proposed school. This, everybody knows could not be done legally. neither can the Ragland proposition or sugges- tion be legally accomplished and l for one think and believe that Governor o Neal will see that the $5O,oo0 recently given to Ragland by the legislature must and shall be used exactly like the legis- lature expressed in making the gift, eith- CT this or we who know Governor O'Neal best. are firm in the opinion that the s5O.00O will forever remain in the state treasury.
 Industrial schools for boys and girls should be scattered and not consolidated, consequently I was disappointed at even .f
 Don't understand me to mean that the question of consolidation wholly influ- enced the board in selecting Ragland, but do understand me to mean that the ef- feet is exactly the same-the influence of one industrial school is destroyed, re- gardless. The Southern Bureau of Eda- cation that met at Nashville on the 2Sth, without any solicitation upon my part. elected me trustee for the school. The honor I appreciate highly-more so be- cause it was wholly unsolicited on my part, nevertheless for the reasons above and below given. I immediately declined to accept the position. It might not be out of place right here to say that only four members of the board mot a
 
 m., Wednesday, August 29, the hour the school was located by a vote of the said four. Allow me to state further That upon reaching Nashville on the morning of the 18th of August, l was surprised to find that numerous letters and tele- grams from certain gentlemen in and near Birmingham had been sent to cer- tain members of the Southern Bureau of Education, protesting against my election as a trustee to the said board, quoting and in most instances, misquoting ex- tracts from speeches made, in my re- cent feeble efforts to drive blind tigers from the great imperial county of Jef- ferson. These quoted utterances of mine which were mostly misquoted, were their only arugments against me and came from gentlemen of the cloth-clergy- properly termed political parsons" cth- CTS from certain run-down-at-the-hee prohibition bowling politicians. I promise to give some of these gentlemen my at tention at an early date. when notice will be served upon them through my at torney, asking for a public retraction cf certain falsehoods published and written over their own signatures. 1 further promise my friends that if then these re- fractions are. not forthwith made, l in- tend to institute a suit against not oily some of these gentlemen, but also against certain Alabama newspapers, charging them with islander and defamation Of character. In the meanwhile the Pine Knot Pile will not be enlarged by any donations on my part, because their own continued bad acts convince me that they will receive the proper attention from the hands of Him who doeth all things we'll" and since the Nashville affair there is no longer any doubt but that the future place of abode of some of these political parsons, including many of me present Alabama "holier than thou pro hibition howlers will be hot enough to satisfy without the use of Pine Knots" Yours truly. T. l.. LONG
 Walker county papers please copy.
 Memphis Tenn, August 31J 1911.