The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-11-06

the states, yet in Alabama, peculiarly blessed with navigable waters, the rail- road has been the instrumentality for physical enlargement to a degree unsur- passed in attainment and in prospect even more remarkable.
 The story of the road, more easily held in mind as the Alabama and chatta- nooga," covers social and political condi- tions of the most profound interest "Know then thyself' Is the everlasting rule of the individual life and of com munity life. The southern people have been ever themselves and not another. They have differed always from other divisions and organizations of the civil ized part of the human family. Let us give to them, in their teachings out, a little studious attention.
 Before resmming the narrative, found in No. 6s of this series, where the initial movement to build railroad from Me ridian to Chattanooga is described, un- der the slave labor regime, 1t is supposed to be profitable to bring into view ante cedent examples of like enterprise in the same era. The callow effort to separate the industrial record of the state into two parts, ''old south" and new south." is not more puerile than 1t is sacrilegious. The dogmatic teaching. that the original interdependence of the white and the black men of the south was enfeebling to the former and degrading to the latter is a vicious perversion of the dignity and glory of American expansion and achieve ment.
 Mobile was a small city of 20,515 popula- ton. Many of the merchants or cotton factors as they were known, were very rich.
 The two rivers, running for hundreds of miles through the plantations, were we'll supplied with powerful freight and pas senger steamboats and the city was di- rectly connected with New Orleans on one side and Pensacola on the other by steamers. But it was known that rail- roads, running parallel with the Hud- son river and the Erie canal, had made New York. The railroad had become the indispensable carrier to which the water line was subsidiary only.
 So on January Il, 1S47, a preannounced public meeting was held in Mobile to consider the building of a railroad to con- meet the Gulf of Mexico with the upper Mississippi and Ohio valleys. It was shown that the distance to Mobile from the mouth of Ohio by a possible railroad was 460 miles, while the distance from the same northern point by river to New Orleans, the only practicable route to the gulf was 1000 miles. The distance by river from St. Louis to New Orleans was lac At4f 4a bile, by a possible railroad, was only 610 miles. The shortest possible line from Nashville to Charleston, S. C., was 779 miles long, to Savannah 765 miles. But a practicable railroad route would bring Mobile, say, 200 miles nearer Nashville than either Charleston or Savannah.
 In a word, it was shown to the meeting that Mobile was the nearest sea port to the mighty valleys of the upper Missis- sippi and to all Ohio and the adjacent states.
 A sudden awakening of the latest spirit of the town came. The purely business meeting aroused an enthusiasm not less vigorous than a political cause. Books were opened for subscriptions to the Mobile and Ohio railroad. Within 9. hours 699 subscribers pledged to the project s631,- 700 cash. The legislature was applied to for the privilege of levying a tax of 2 per cent on the assessable property of the city. The legislature ordred an election to determine the merits of the petition, and it carried, SS2 to 8.
 A company was organizd with Sydney Smith as president. Engineer Lewis Troost of Mobile was sent to make a reconnaissance of the whole line. Two of the board went north to find a first class engineer; with much difficulty they discovered one in the person of MT. John Childe.
 Congress granted literally of public lands on the line. Messrs. George s. Gaines of Alabama and John J. McRae of Mississippi were started by private con- veyance to traverse the whole line, hold ing public meetings at the towns and villages and making personal appeals to citizens to subscribe. They reported un- expected degree of success. Chief En- gineer Childe, accompanied by his first assistant, Lewis Troost started at Cairo and travelled leisurely over the whole line to Mobile by private conveyance. in- structing the farmers on the way as they lodged in their homes for the night, and everywhere making favorable impression.
 In an official report to President Syd- nev Smith, Chief Engineer Childe wrote: q wish merely to invite the attention of all parties interested to the true reason why so many railroads north of g degrees parallel are converging to a junction
  bile bay is the natural nearest and best southern outlet by railway for all men living between the Allegheny mountains and the Mississippi river north of latitude s2, including also the states of Missouri and Iowa. The Mobile road presents the shortest and cheapest trunk line of travel to that bay"
 Two years after the organization of the Mobile and Ohio railroad at Mobile, that is. in September. 1s49, railroad conven- ton was held at Talladega, at which Mo bile was well represented. The spokes- man for the seaport was Hon. Phillip Phillips, a lawyer who had made an en- viable reputation in the legislature by pro- posing state debt commission law, under which Hon. F. s. Lyon as commissioner extricated the credit of the state from an ignoble situation. At that same session, lS4f, MT. Phillips offered the first bill to make state geological survey to locate the coal and iron deposits. Whether the projected railroad, to unite the Tennessee river with the navigable waters of the bay of Mobile should have it's southern terminus on the Alabama at Montgomery or Selma, was the debated questions Mir 1 lthiliips argued that if the terminus should
 Montgomery. the road must run on