The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-17

companies, acting together may have owners of property practically at their
 mercy in the matter of rates and may have 1t in their power to deprive the public generally of the advantages flow ing from competition between rival or ganizations. 'To meet the evils of such combinations the state is competent to adopt appro- priate regulations that will tend to sub
 stitute competition in the place of conn bination or monopoly"
 
 the people and the legislature of the
 state declaring that a candidate for the | federate senate Is the representative of
 a system and that it would be an outrage for the democratic party to take him up and elect him. This great fact Is ablaza over the whole country. Shall Alabama
 recede one step from it's progressive and aggressive legislation and It's protection of the people? Shall we go back to the
 bosom of the conservative stand-patters.
 called the allied interests and again sur
 render to their care the rights of the reopie?
 Today we are standing above the star th at marks the spot where Jefferson
 Davis delivered his inaugural and took the oath of office as President of the southern Confederacy. To our right stands the Confederate monument. On the four corners above Its base in heroic relief are the statutes of the four arms of the service-navy, calvary, artillery. in
 fantry. On the body of the monument
 are patriotic inscriptions which are
 carved on the hearts of tens of thousands of patriotic people. In our front Is the
 flagstaff taken from Ceveras ship at San
 tlago. It was sent to our state by Rich
 he Ia bamian who did that deed of great daring.
 Young Bagley, the tar heel boy at Car denas, showed that he could stand by lis ship mid storm of shot and she'll At
 San Juan tbe man who seized the flag at the climax of the battle and sounded the victorious charge was our own Joe
 Wheeler, not in Confederate gray, but in federal blue. My own son as lieutenant served under the stars and stripes in
 Il e Philippines. We are justly proud of our glorious past, but today we are band ed together under common flag, and should the government call for patriotic
 service no state ;n the union would more quickly respond that Alabama.
 "Peonage is a distinctive production of Mexico I am sorry to say that 1t has
 been charged to Alabama by the federal courts The result of the war between
 the states was the freedom of the slaves.
 radical partisan Congress after the war, attempted to fix on the south curse worse than that of Cain-the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments-botho of which would enforce upon us. negro franchise and negro social equality and through these negro dominance and negro control. To the everlasting glory of the white race, you and your fathers made this inn possible While you defeated negro en- franchisement and negro social equality. yet, you more than any other people have given to the negro educational and prop erty rights.
 After the war to give the impoverished farmer credit you passed what is known as the crop lien law enabling them to mortgage crop that had not been plant ed and proving penalties for the non-cul- tlvation and non-delivery. This was done to secure the verity of a contract end gave to them standing in the credits of business. Just so by law did you give fn- tegrity to contract of laborer who. would work for wages, making 1t an of fense against the law to secure advances on such a contract with the intent to de- fraud and then skip that contract, This law was one of the nest far-reaching in its interest and one of the most bene- fcai in effect. It gave to a large number of people who work on a wage scale the benefits of the integrity of a contract. When you can lead by law, by. persuasion. by force, If need be, people to stand by contract with intent to make that con- tract veritable, then a tremendous ad- vance in civiliza ton has been made, not only with respect to the party to the con- tract but to the country as well. When the reverse of this is true, then the worst possible lesson leading to the degradation If the people has been taught. I caution
 I.-- -s.lo <t,ot . H<v rrrftH
 in the decision of the supreme court to give this great advantage to the laborers of Alabama, to the people of Alabama, then it is your bounden duty to do so.
 Peonage is a crime possible in sparsely populated countries like Mexfco, but in a civilized, law-abiding country as Ala
 Dama, a sporadic case may occur; as @
 condition 1t is impossible From time im- memorial, in the construction of large
 public works such as the Panama canal. the Tlagler railroad. the great transcon- tinental lines. where proposed laborers secure transportation and advances on the
 promise to work, and then afterwards at- tempt to violate their part of the con- tract species of coercion has been used and will always be used. That never was peonage. The punishment of deserters from the army and navy and from the Panama canal should convince the fed eral authorities that in all these things there is some parity. One of the worst forms of continued sectionalism is evident when some of our citizens. distinguished or otherwise are sent by the federal courts to- federal prison for long term
 of Imprisonment and fabulous fines im- posed upon them on the evidence of a swinder; for an offense in a large meas
 ure not real, but fictitious; an offense
 against conditions supposed to exist. In I dissenting opinion Justice Holmes of the supreme court said. had such a law come up from the state of New York it
 would. not have beep declared unconstitu- tional And yet Alabama is held up In a
 most spectacular manner by the court and people in high authority as holding poor
 people in bondage and working them un- der force and the lash. There occurs, no doubt, in Alabama individual cases of restraint and coercion but peonage in Ala bama is fictitious condition, the pro-
 duct. of sporadic mind; an unconsciois erection by prejudice of condition that does not exist and which has unfortunate | =