Referring to newspapers and al
leged newspapers, this city has an
extreme monstrocity in a sample of
the latter class. This thing has long
since ceased to be a newspaper, and
for some years past has been, and it
now is, the very grind-organ of the
half-handful of Knights of Columbus
here. It can truthfully claim to be,
and it is, the official organ of the
Roman Catholic diocese of Alabama,
a State in which the Roman Catholics
officially claim a total “population”
of just a little over one per cent.,
with half of these on the Alabama-
Gulf Coast and half of the remaining
half non-citizens, unable to speak or
read the English language. This
paper (not newspaper) circulates
(though very sparingly) in a terri
tory that is not one iota less than
90% per cent. Protestant, yet the
obsession of papalism has it with a
strong vice-like grip and its chief
owner and nominal editor, a man of
considerable intelligence and wealth,
has utterly abandoned this alleged
newspaper to a Knight of Columbus
who willingly and eagerly does
Rome’s every bidding, and under
whose censorship every word submit
ted to this publication, editorial or
repertorial, must fall. Thus North
Alabama beholds the spectacle of a
Roman Catholic daily paper circu
lated among a people unanimously
Protestant. Reference is had here to
the alleged news columns of The Bir
mingham Daily Age-Herald, for to
preach popery editorially to a Prot
estant people would be too plain a
perversion of the functions of even
this thing. By means of its news
columns, one Could stay in Vladi
vostock, Asiatic Russia, and know
every move made by the 137 Knights
of Columbus in this county of three
thousand population. Draw radio
cut of this city in every direction for
150 miles, close the circle, >and there
is the territory that ought to be serv
ed by this miserable sheet, yet in all
that vast region it has a paltry 19,000
subscribers —just half what The Bir
mingham News, a real newspaper, a
live and vigorous NEWSpaper, no
organ for anything or anybody, has—
and even The Birmingham Ledger,
another genuine NEWSpaper, owned
by gentlemen who are Catholics, has
one and one-half times The Age-
Herald’s subscription list. And The
Ledger is not an Associated Press
newspaper. 