challenged the new railroad statutes in federal court. The disagreement between the state government and the railroad continued after Comer had left office. Still, he achieved his goal "to give the state increased regulatory power over railroad freight rates." Response to 1908 miners' strike In 1908, 7,000 (mostly white) miners went on strike at the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad (TCIRR) and other mining operations in Alabama. They were joined by 500 African-American convicts leased from the state. Company officials petitioned the state to break up the strike with state militia. To keep operating, TCIRR officials pushed the African-American convicts to work extremely long hours. White foremen brought in additional bonded African Americans as convict labor as well. William Millin, a prominent African-American union leader, protested these conditions and was arrested. A mob took him from jail and lynched him. Another African-American organizer was hanged in a lynching a week later. Governor Comer issued orders mobilizing the state militia to break up the strikers and their organized camps. In mid-August 1908, a delegation of prominent Birmingham citizens visited leaders of the striking miners and issued an explicit threat. They said that unless the strike ended, Birmingham would "make Springfield [Illinois] (where 12,000 whites had burned down the African-American section of the city) look like six cents.". Governor Comer said, "We are outraged at the attempts to establish social equality between black and white miners." He added that he would "not tolerate eight or nine thousand idle niggers in the state of Alabama." Educational reform Comer's reforms to improve education for whites were funded by increased revenues to the state. A State Board of Assessors was created "to equalize taxation by equalizing property values throughout the state and establishing franchise taxes for businesses." The reassessment of property values angered the large property owners who saw their property taxes increase. But, the major increases in state tax revenues came about not through taxation reforms (although this probably stabilized tax revenues) but through the increase in revenues generated from convict labor leased from the state to private enterprise. Comer's administration applied the increases in spending for the education only of white students. Comer directed funds to the building of white rural schools and county high schools (at least one in each county), and increasing the appropriations made to the University of Alabama, the Alabama Polytechnic Institute in Auburn, the nine agricultural schools, the