The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-04-18
EIGHT GOVERNORS OF ALABAMA
 1S74-1901
No. 110-The Wid ening Party Split Thomas c. Jones, Governor
1S74-1901

At the close of April, notwithstanding
 the excitement created by the personal | canvass of each of the two candidates
 for governor, to come before the bien-
 nial state convention of the democratic and conservative party to assemble
 June 8, 1892, only about two thirds of
 the 466 delegates apportioned to the
 counties had been chosen. Jones had 1 POI instructed delegates and Kolb 101 at that time.
 l On May 30 a long advertised mass meeting of the organizations that had | laid the foundation of the peoples party
 at St. Louis on February 22 preceding 1 sat in Erswell hall, Birmingham. The
 president of the State Farmers Alli-
 ance, S NJ. Adams. presided. The youth
 ful, recently developed politician, J. c. l C'evangel') Manning of Clay county
 appeared on the floor. Adams had issued
 a stirring call When it was found that
 the hall with a seating capacity of of l 400 was not half full, his surprise and 1 chagrin was undisguised He spoke in 1 vehement denunciation of the ma chine politics" that dominated the cap l itol at Montgomery and declared the op- l position if sufficiently earnest might | do for Alabama what it had done all ready in Texas, purge the state of that l kind of government.
 l There was a negro Farmers Alliance | of limited numbers in the black belt. The l Dallas county chapter of this organiza- 1 tion sent one of it's members, J. F. Wash | ington, to the conference and he took his | seat A committee platform came in l with a report reiterating the sentiments I of President Adams speech and the re- 1 port was adopted by 4 of the 4S delegates represented.
 | At that stage of the second period of | 'reconstruction,' when the negro race 1 in the electorate was an acute menace to | good government, the presence of ths
 negro delegate from Dallas county proved I to be a most unfortunate incident in the attempt to create an opposition to the organized party in power.
 This misfortune of the morning session was in no measure miugated by the late afternoon meeting. called by Manning in the same hall The "evangel'' took the
 chair with his usual sang frod. The ex- tremely youthful. beardless face played an important part in giving emphasis to
 words of learned length and laundering sound mostly sarcasm launched against things that were and ought not to be George F. Gather of Walnut Grove Etowah county, an alliance leader had
 
 rigged out in gorgeous uniform, ap- parently that of a brass band. He seemed to be the only alliance man inclined to back the "evangel."
 The mass meeting, so thoroughly ad- vertised, proved a fiasco
 The energy with which Captain Kolb and his followers continued to prosecute his cause even after instructed delegates to the approaching state convention had been appointed by the counties, in two- thirds of the membership, for Jones, nat urally lead to the common conclusion that kolb would bolt the convention. The ostensible chief fault in the party organization as discovered by the Kolb faction was the rule adopted by the last convention, 1890, that delegates to the convention of 1892 should be apportioned among the counties by the votes cast in 1890 for Jones for governor and the ob- jection lay in this, that in the black belt counties the vote returned for governor
 was fictitious in large measure; for ex-