The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-07-01
COMPLETE REPLY. TO BUTLER MAYS
 # EG|SLAT|VF QUIZ.
Charged Representative At- tempted By Inuendo To Dis
 courage UpbuiIding Port
STATEMENT IS ISSUED TO SET RUM0RS AT REST
Board Reiterates Improve ments ToBe Made at Mobile
 At No Cost to Taxpayers


 recent statement of Representative
 J. Lee Long of Butler county regard
 ing the port of Mobile. MT. Long
 statement was in the form of ques
 tIons and was sent to each member
 of the legislature. The questions
 were of a character to discourage the
 legislature from authorizing that
 body to proceed with the enabling
 acts necessary to improve the port
 as provided by the constitutional
 amendment adopted by Alabama some
 time ago.
 The statement of the harbor board
 constitutes complete answer to MT
 Longs questions and the board uti-
 lizes the opportunity to present in
 a very forcible manner the great ad-
 vantages which will accrue to the
 entire state by proceeding with the
 work of port improvement which
 the people of the state approved by
 such an overwhelming majority. The
 boards complete statement is as fol- | lows:
 In a belated effort to induce the . legislature to reverse the verdict of
 the people, signally rendered at the
 last election on the seaport amend
 ment, MT. J. Lee Long has propounded
 list of so-called questions and
 mailed the same to the legislature,
 and a number of newspapers have
 printed them.
 If these questions had been in
 tended in good faith to elicit in
 formation of real value, they would
 have been addressed to the state
 harbor commission or some other le-
 gitimate and responsible agency in
 the first place. so that they could
 have made a. reply thereto. Instead
 of trying to get the facts Of the
 case from authentic sources Of ln-
 formation, he has used ths method
 as the most effective way Of knock ing the proposition which the people
 have indorsed. Every insinuation
 contained in MT. Longs :ommunica-
 ton was made In the iecent cam
 paign a hundred differelt times and
 was answered fully, aid their ab-i
 surdity exposed. The Itople by mors
 than 7S,0oO majority-the largest
 ever given constitutional amend
 ment in this state-laVe expressed themselves on these questions, after A a rnostt thorough cahpaign. The effort now to induce the legislature to disrgard the plain
 mandate of the p@pIe delivered Tn
 the most emphatt way that they
 have ever spoken n this state.
 Answers seriatim
 In order howeer, that they may be fully answeri again before the forum which hal to deal with. 1t in the last instano, we will quote his questions and lake answer thereto
 seriatim. Befoe doing so, however, we want to rply to the statement of his in the preamble. that $10,- 100000 of the taxpayers money is more than the eentire indebtedness of the state of Alabama from 1880 up to 1921" It j not proposed that one dollar of thl taxpayers money will be used for this purpose. Time and again was hat issue raised in the last electioy and time and again was it's fallacy fxposed. We repeat, not -.Af flA will be usd for this purpose. The propositioi is simply that the state shall lendits credit for the develop ment of he states seaport on we'll defined md well -thought-out plans which wll assure that the projects when ercted will pay their own way, and in time will constitute one of the sretest, if not the greatest, as set of he state. The people have said thit they want this project car D ried o,t.
 We low take up his questions. Mr Long asks:
 FirS-Why did Mobile export over one lillion bales of cotton in 1859. \ and &ports at the present time less l thanfon hundred thousand bales? Apswer-It is true that in 1859 or 1S60there was exported through the 1 port'd- Nd5ijlfe-na pffllion or more bales l of cotton. It is lso true that in 1922 l the exports of otton through Mobile [ were more than one nun dred and twenty thousand bales. But \ MT. Long does not seem to realize \ that anythingl has happened since | 1860. There h.s been, however, for his information tremendous change in transportatHn since 1860. At that time the railrod mileage in Alabama \ was practicall, negligible, and about \ the only transportation afforded our products was nat provided by nature ! the wonderful river system of Ala | bama. All ofthe cotton produced in Alabama for export as far north as Tennessee, anl all of the cotton pro duced in wes Mississippi for export, had no way d reaching port except by hauling p the nearest river point and floating it down our rivers to Mobile In fact, cotton from the ! eastern pat of Georgia went out f through Mobile in that way. At that | period Noble had relatively as good advantages as any other port upon the gulf.
 Building Eads Jetties.
 The frs thing, outside of the build
 ing of railpads, which made radi- cal change in the relative positions of Mobile and New Orleans, was the aid given by the national government in the construction of the Eads jet ties at the mouth of the Mississippi river, which deepened the channel and pernitted ships to go directly to the WEarVeS at New Orledns, Wnlle Mobile stnl had to lighter all of it's exports down Mobile bay to deep water This deepening of the chan mel by the construction of tho Eads jetties produced an immediate and destructive result as far as Mobiles ocean trade was concerned and prac- tica}ly destroyed the business of the city of Mobile. It was only after the national government dredged a ship channel up Mobile bay to Mobile river that Mobile shipping began to in crease. which it has continued to do. The cotton from the territory which shipped through Mobile in 1860 now goes to market by hundred different routes; some by rail to mills in Alabama, some by rail to 1 other southern mills and to New England mills, and in the same man. ner to other ports for export. much greater part of our cotton crop is used in the United States now than formerly.
 Possibly Mobile has not been as ac- tive in some respects regarding trade as she might have been. Other ports | have certain privileges regarding cot ton, which are called Concentration fc>.tausd On Page EighD