The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-06-27
EIGHT GOVERNORS OF ALABAMA
 1S4-1901
No. 122-Some Very Disconnected Electors
 William c. Oates, Governor
1S74-1901

Governor-elect Oates might well have taken pride mi his personal success. There was never a day in which his attitude toward prime questions, financial and monetary, was that of his party in the state.
 Early in the 1870 decade the validity of Governor Smiths indorsement of Ala bama and Chattanooga railroad bonds came up for public discussion and in- quiry by the legislature. Colonel Oates was a representative of Henry county and a member of the joint committee selected to report He did not concur in the ma jority report, which was favorable to the protest against the liability of the state. He was known as a debt payer where the people were practically unanimous in the position that the debt tainted with fraud should not be recognized.
 In the special session of Congress, called by President Cleveland for August, 1893, he caused to be printed speech which was never delivered in practical support of the President and against the posi- ton taken by both senators from Ala hama and six of the eight representatives of the state on the silver coinage ques- ton
 He was known as a ..sound money" man and was the candidate of the sound money faction and was elected, as cleo tions then were determined. Nevertheless the sound money presidential ticket Of 1896, two years only later, supported by the men who were responsible for the election of Oates to be governor, carried no county and no beat in any county, save one beat, perhaps, in all Alabama.
 The oathbound secret order the Farm CTS Alliance that was the main support of Captain Kolb against Governor Jones in 1892, had disappeared from the field in 1894. The prolonged and apparently hope less degredation of agriculture in low prices of it's products on the market, the frequency, unversality and violence of strikes and the adoption by President Cleveland, democrat and his following of the republican party policy, in the de- terminate question of coinage of the two money metals, took the place of all other issues and absorbed the public interest
 Col. Daniel s. Troy, a leader of the state bar, leader of the white mans movement, long senator in the legis- lature distinguished for high achieve ment, came forward in 1895 with vehement protest against the vicious nature of election methods pursued in the state He had voted for Colonel Oates. He had never been a partisan of Captain Kolb He exposed the farcical character of the election of 1894 in his own county of Montgomery as lesson of warning to the people, that the very forms of the elec-
 
 practices
 The temper of the silver men who had voted for Oates was not appeased by his election, while aggravated conditions of distress in all fields of labor continued
 A few days after the August election of 1894 council of Kob leaders and lead ing republicans met and deliberated long at Birmingham. This was one sign only of unwonted disturbance of the public mind.
 On September 20, 1894, Messrs. R. F. and Reuben Kolb, father and son, issued the first number of an afternoon newspaper The Birmingham Peoples Tribune, de- voted to the Cleveland monetary principles and the promotion of the an cient democratic faith. The paper at once attained ejaculation as wide as the state.
 On Monday, November 12, the day next before the regular biennial meeting of the legislature, State Senator A. T. Goodwin applied to Governor Jones for the ordinary use of the hall of the house