ony, the establishment of the Alabama Railroad Commission in 1881, the State Department of Agriculture in 1883, the State Agricultural Society in 1884,-to say nothing of its beneficient influence on the state's educational institutions and laws.48 The constitution of 1875 was shaped partly by the influence of the Grange, especially the provision against free passes to public officials riding trains. The order, like its successor the Alliance, worked persistently for immigration and for reforms in the state convict lease system.49 One of the important achievements due largely to the efforts of the State Grange was the enactment of a law in the early 'nineties providing for the election of the state commissioner of agriculture rather than appointment by the governor.50 The Grange was the forerunner as well as the contemporary of the Alliance. Indeed after the latter came into the state in 1887 the two orders worked51 in very much the same manner, the Alliance becoming from its early days more political and partisan than the Grange. Many farmers belonged to both orders. The Grange, State Agricultural Society and the Alliance were good schools leading into the Populist movement.

STATE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

Notwithstanding the many compaints from the agricultural element, the administrations of Governor O'Neal (1882-'86) and Seay (1886-'90) manifested a friendly attitude toward the farmers and many legislative efforts were made to relieve their distress. Indeed, Seay's administration has been called "the period of the farmers' movement' "52 and with almost equal justification might the same title apply to the preceding four years under Governor O'Neal.

It was very necessary in an overwhelmingly rural state to look to the requirements of agriculture. An effort at such purpose had been made by the constitution of 1868 which contained a provision for the election for four years-twice the period of the other state officers-of a

48 Buck, Granger Movement, p. 202; DuBose, Article No. 56 in Age-Herald, Sept. 5, 1913; Owen, Alabama, I, p. 667; Buck, Granger Movement, Chaps. IV and V.

49 Advertiser, Feb. 15, 1874.

50 Age-Herald, Aug. 6, 1890.

51 Age-Herald, July 24, 1889; Owen, Alabama, I, p. 567.

52 J. W. DuBose, "The Period of the Farmers' Movement," in Age-Herald, Oct. 14, 1913.

commissioner as the head of a Department of Industrial Resources.58 Observe that this department was provided not by a mere law but by the constitution itself. The purpose of the "bureau" was to develop agriculture and other industries of the state by collecting and disseminating information and statistics on Alabama's resources. A fine contemplation, but amid the turmoil of the period, little was accomplished and the constitution of 1875 abolished the "department."54

For the next seven years Alabama had no such office, but February 23, 1883, the legislature passed the Hawkins bill creating a State Department of Agriculture whose functions were practically analagous to those of the Department of Industrial Resources.55

Alabama was following Georgia's example in establishing such bureaus. Indeed the State Department of Agriculture like the Railroad Commission owed its existence to the Grange's influence.56 The headquarters of the commissioner were to be at Auburn. However, the code of 1886 provided for its removal to the state capitol, where it has since remained.57 Judge E. C. Betts of Huntsville was appointed by Governor O'Neal as the first commissioner, being reappointed in 1885.

In addition to the duties of analyzing soils and fertilizers,58 and the protection of the farmer against spurious

53 Ibid.

54 See Reports of Com'r. of Indus. Resources, 1869-1874.

55 Age-Herald, Sept. 7, 1913; Acts, 1882-3, pp. 190-197; Owen, Alabama, I, pp. 9-11; Miller, Alabama, p. 284.

56 Age-Herald, July 24, 1889.

57 Proceedings Fourth Ann. Sess. State Agric. Soc. p. 16; Miller, Alabama, p. 284; DuBose, Article No. 74, in Age-Herald, Oct. 21, 1913.

58 Proceedings Fourth Ann. Sess. Agric. Soc., 17; see Section 13 of the Act of 1882-3; Owen, Alabama, I, pp. 9-11. Up to this time each farmer had had to be his own judge as to the kind of fertilizer he used. Moreover, since commercial fertilizers were now more commonly used than in earlier days when lands were more fertile and commercial fertilizers less plentiful, the individual farmer, unlearned in chemistry and the agricultural sciences, was more completely than ever at the mercy of the fertilizer manufacturer or middleman who wished a high profit. To protect the farmer in such transactions was one of the purposes of this new department set up by the government. It was a splendid safeguard provided by the government for the individual who would avail himself of its services. Men who continued to complain of no valuable returns from fertilizers were somewhat enlightened when it was revealed that $4.42 was the real commercial value per ton of the fertilizer for which they regularly paid $40. The department of agriculture greatly curtailed this class

fertilizer sales, this new department was also to serve as an investigation bureau.59 It was charged with the preparation of an Agricultural Handbook to set forth in an official form the state's natural and social attractions and resources. Commissioner Betts prepared his first handbook in 1884 which supply was quickly exhausted. In the spring of 1887 a second handbook was issued, but before any copies were distributed, they were all destroyed by the burning of the main building of the College at Auburn.60

The commissioner's office was said to receive some two hundred letters daily and 36,000 to 50,000 farmers were furnished regularly circulars, bulletins, and reports relating to crops and agicultural work in the state, some being prepared by the department and others directly by the experiment stations. These, with the numerous other points of contact between the department and the people offered some means of beautifying and enlightening the home on the farm, which Commissioner Kolb (1887) pictured as the "most God-forsaken place on earth." In this way more boys and girls were enticed to remain on the farm.61

There were many evidences of a growing interest in the socalled farmers' side of life, and such enthusiasm found legal expression in various ways. Aside from the establishment of the agricultural department in 1883 as a practical agricultural college for the masses, the Canebrake Agricultural Experiment Station was established in 1885 near Uniontown. This made the second experiment station, the other being at Auburn. Professor Newman 62 attributed the necessity of two stations to the difference in character of the soil,-that in Lee county being sandy while the Perry county land was 'black cane

of imposition and fraud, and the price of fertilizer was divided by two. Yet thousands of dollars annually had gone from the state for the purchase of such spurious fertilizers. (Proceedings Fifth Semi-Ann. Sess. Agric. Soc., pp. 35, 62, 73; Ibid. Third Ann. Sess., p. 35.) The minimum amount of fertilizer used in 1888 was 65,000 tons, or 1,000 tons to the county. The cost in 1870 was $1,300,000 and in 1880, $2,422,000. (Proceedings Fifth SemiAnn. Sess. Agric. Soc., p. 73; Owen, Alabama, I, p. 560; Eleventh Census, Pt. III, p. 616.

59 Proceedings Fifth Semi-Ann. Sess. Agric. Soc., p. 68. 60 Proceedings Fourth Ann. Sess. Agric. Soc., p. 17.

61 Proceedings Fifth Semi-Ann. Sess. Agric. Soc., pp. 66, 78. 62 Proceedings Fifth Ann. Sess. Agric. Soc., p. 66; DuBose, Article No. 74, in Age-Herald, Oct. 21, 1913; Owen, Alabama, I, p. 199; Proceedings Third Ann. Sess. Agric. Soc., p. 46.

brake land'. He urged the establishment of another station in the fertile limestone region of the Tennessee valley so that that type of soil might be better analyzed.63 Some years later the legislature acceded to this demand, but the appropriation bill was vetoed by Governor Jones.64 The popularity of the Department of Agriculture was evidenced by the fact that there were eleven aspirants to the commissionership65 in 1887, following the resignation and death of Judge Betts.

63 See Experiment Station Reports, 1887-96 for types of work. 64 Acts, 1888-9, p. 1036.

65 Advertiser, June 12, 1887. At this point it may be of interest to quote a humorous letter to Governor Seay written by "Corporal Needy" who out of his generous sympathy for the governor offered to relieve him from the embarrassing task of selecting a commissioner from the large number of aspirants.

"My Dear Governor:

"Just now you have my sympathy, and this I send to you as a relief. Soon you will be forced to appoint a Commissioner of Agriculture for the great state of Alabama, not the Alabama of here we rest, but the Alabama of here we boom. After saying we are well and hope these few lines will find you enjoying the same blessing, I will come to the point. I want the office of Commissioner of Agriculture. First, I want it for the salary. Second, My wife wants to be Mrs. Commissioner of Agriculture. Third, My friends, I reckon, want me to have it. Fourth, I do love a good coal fire in winter. Fifth, I am fond of a good airy room with arm chair attachments for summer. Sixth, I would like to have two men to wait on me. Seventh, I want to advance the interest of our great commonwealth, not forgetting especially the interest of number one.

"Now, Governor, the number seven is a popular Biblical number, but if those given are not sufficient, I can give seventy times seven why I want the place. As to my qualifications, I can milk, churn, doctor horses and cattle, and most any disease chickens and hogs are subject to, except cholera, and in fine I am what might be termed a veterinary surgeon of the first water. I know how to stop goats from jumping, and mules from throwing down the fence. I can read Latin, spell in Noah Webster's speller and define in Daniel Webster's dictionary. I am pretty well up on public documents, having noted with care the drawings showing the whereabouts of the diseased cattle and swine are subject to; have read reports of the Ku Klux Committee, and when it comes to Tenth Census Reports I am heeled. Have read "Thompson's Seasons', Come Gentle Spring, Ethereal Mildness, Come, studied Blair's Rhetoric and First Reader. In fact, I am tolerable well educated. I know that many applicants for the place are clever men, men of parts, and fit to fill any place in your power to bestow, from Notary of Public up to Commissioner of Agriculture; but to fill the latter place it takes a man of affairs like myself.

"My appointment would bring with it some changes that would be beneficial and would be appreciated. I would get after all the guano agents and have them tag all the sacks. Sure as you ever was Tom Seay I would do this thing. I would have good,

8

The Corporal's letter to "Private Tom" might have won first prize in a literary contest, but it failed to win the commissionership. The plum fell to the ambitions "Captain" R. F. Kolb of Eufaula, Barbour county, grandson and namesake of the well known "General" Reuben C. Shorter of Eufaula.66 After graduating from the University of North Carolina, young Kolb settled on a large plantation with negroes to do the work. He was the youngest delegate to the famous State Democratic Convention at Montgomery in 1860; saw four years of service as a captain in the Confederate army and surrendered himself and his men in 1865 in N. C. according to the terms made between Generals Sherman and Johnston. For a decade after the war he was a big cotton planter, till cotton reached a low ebb in 1873, then he turned to raising watermelons, at which he became a champion. He had 150 acres in melons for commercial purposes and developed the "Kolb Gem" ("K. G."), known the South over, and advertised in all seed catalogues as America's most famous melon. He cut 200,000 melons in 1888 for seed, and shipped seed by the carload and sold 2,000 pounds of the famous "K. G." seed to one house.67

clever clerks and make them know their place and keep them in it. I would issue monthly Bulletins, and even weekly Bulletins, if the growth of Lespedeza (Jasper Clover) demands it, would always say crab grass instead of Panicus Sanguinale and Bermuda grass, instead of Cynodon Doctylon, and old father broom-sedge would never be proceeded before my Bulletin readers as Andpropogon Virginicus. No, Governor, I would print my Bulletin in plain English. As to my age, I am not young enough to take the big head and not old enough to be childish, am just about the right age, and could fill the chair of Commissioner of Agriculture with ease and comfort to myself, and would do credit to the position thereby reflecting honor upon your good judgment in making the appointment.

"In giving me the appointment, Governor, you will run no risk whatever as I have a talent for that kind of business and if that talent lies dormant the sin will 'lie at your door'. Yours forever, Corporal Needy."

66 Proceedings Fourth Ann. Sess. Agric. Soc., p. 15; Age-Herald, Oct. 21, 1913.

67 Advertiser, March 24, 1889. It will soon be observed how this new commissioner by his ambition, his extensive travels in every county in the state, holding clubs according to law, and by his genial and affable nature became very popular with the masses. As a member and defender of the Farmers' Alliance, it was natural for its members to rally to his cause and his political standard in later years. Little did it appear to the public that the statute providing the agricultural department with its elaborate machinery and duties was virtually creating a political agent which in less than ten years was to rend the Democratic party.