The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-10-14
CHOCTAW COUNTY
 HAS NEW ROAD PLAN
People Proud to Watch Ala
 hama Coal Barges
ALL ARE PROSPEROUS
Marl Rock, Which Is so Plentiful, Has Every Indication of Being Natural Fertilizer-Suf-
 fragists Are Active

1.isman october 13--tSpeciaJ. )--Good
 roads for the small sum of s190 per mile Is the achievement of the county commits sloners for this. Choctaw, county. and the roads have been so well constructed of sand and clay that they compare favor ably with roads that have travelled Over in Shelby and other counties where the cost has been around 5000 per mile.
 The commissioners have adopted very simple plan that eliminates all waste and keeps out any sembance of graft They issue county warrants for the sum that they can afford to spend each year for orads. These warrants are taken up in the fall when tax money comes in, and the people have the benefit of having their roads built in the summer when the
 days are long, and the contractors can accomplish more.
 The plan upon which they are operating
 is to build out in each direction from the county seat of Butler, until they have a system of trunk lines running north.
 south east and west over the entire county. Then they propose to build their laterals into these main highways and thus gridiron their county with sand and clay roads. They evidently believe that the father of good roads" Senator Bankhead, may be able to get the pro- posed federal aid for post roads,. for they are confining their operations in the most part to pest roads.
 They have not issued any bonds, do not
 propose to issue any from what can gather. but are spending each year around sso00 for roads. and when it i@ remem- bered that they get those roads for less than S2e0 per mile it can be seen that ii a few years they will have fine system of highways with no bonded debt.
 Watch Coal Go Down River
 l am disappointed that MT. Rountree of the Good Roads association cannot hold his convention down here. He ought, at least, to have some member of the county commissioners or the probatr judge to tell them about I am not sure that oscar Gray. the compress man froi Butler. can do the subject justice be- cause the people tell me he thinks of the river, dreams of the river, talks the river. until one would expect that the Elbe was nothing like potential as the Bigbee. Speaking of rivers and boats. you ought to seee the people line up down here to see the barges go by with Ala bama coal If I had the money that George Gordon Crawford has I would buy me a ticket to Jackson and stand on the bridge and see my coal go by and dream of the day when Alabama coal would dominate the Spgld of South Amer ica as some day it must. It is an in- spring sight to see the boats go by loaded to the guards with black diamonds from Walker, Tuscaloosa and Jefferson coun- ties. ...I
 Some Natural Fertilizer l I have never studied chemistry much.
 but after going over some beds of what
 the natives call 'marl rock I wish that l |. +I-.. 1 to school Out from here about i've miles one encounters great cliffs of this rock and it looks to me a great deal like the phosphate rock of Florida. am told that it has been analysed and that iI carries per cent phosphate, with cer tain amount of lime and other things necessary for soil upbuilding.
 I have seen one or two fields that had been given an application of this o-called mari and it appeared to me just as if the farmer had used some of the Grasselli peoples fertilizer. It appears better ada pted to grain crops than to cotton, which leads me to believe that it carries more lime than phosphate.
 Some of these fine days some fellow 1 that knows something about chemistry will come down through this county and reort great find: Some of these days | l s%een that old Choctaw will be produc- | ing her own fertilizers in factories right
 on her own soil.
 1 I ran across something else down here
 that seems remarkable to me: It is 1 kind of sand that appears to make nat 1 nral cement. It is heavy grained, of a Drownsh color. and has bright particles
 running through it. I am pretty sure that l the Kirkpatrick people of Birmingham
 have never mined anything just like it. 1 It may be the type of sand that enters | into the manufacture of glass Anyhow. 1 have some of it that am going to take
 up to The Age-Herald office and find
 out just what 1t is. They have a man
 up there that ought to know quite bit
 of chemistry. for he graduated at Au-
 burn I am told
 1 The timber is rapidly passing away in | old Choctaw; the mills are running
 steadily and every few minutes one hears l the boom of a tree falMng to the ground
 that it took nature 50 years to make. but
 which man can make into lumber at sn
 prodgious a rate that in few years
 there will be no more pine knots to make
 light for the pseudo statesmen of the county to study by. I ran across one ct l the most intelligent men I have ever met | here today. who received his education l by the light of a pine knot The gentle l man was hero of the Confectionery. who came home without a dollar from the war, l but who has accumulat ted competency and who now sits in ''his house by the side of the road and is a friend to man. | He was great friend of my fathers. and l I listened to him by the hour as he re- 1 counted experiences when they followed | Little Joe Wheeler I obtained all the I data necessary to enable me to join the Sons of Veterans. After listening to that
 gentleman talk it seems to me that every I man in the south should be proud of what our fathers went through in support of
 an idea that to them represented the best there was in government.
 | Suffragists Are Active 1 The suffragsts have been smelling the woods in this territory. I have not learned of any addresses by Mrs. Jacobs
 or Mrs. Hundley, but it seems they have
 young woman who halls from Mobile by l the name of Miss Stalworth that keeps l the fires burning for equal rights to all" including the women. From what l I have observed of her work she is as | effective in campaigning as Tom Heflln
 and I rather fancy she could hold her | own with the redoubtabe exponent of 70 l cent cotton.
 About this time last year the farmers | and merchants were all crying hard times and no one knowing which way to turn. 1 Now they are talking automobiles. the l Birmingham fair. Caheens opening. and a. kinds of things that would seem to n- dicate that there was money in the till. | A year ago one could hear that Mr Will
 son would not be reelected and that the democrats might as we'll haul in their 1 sails. When cotton hit 1o cents the talk was forgotten and now all one hears is !. leo, lac h