JOHN SKBLTON WILLIAMS,
(Of John L. Williams & Sons, Bankers, Ricbmond, Va.)
PRESIDENT OF THE GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY CO.
THE
Southern States.
JANUARY, 1897.
THE GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS
TERRITORY.
Bv Albert Phenis.
During 1896 there was hardly a
more interesting or important railroad
event in the South than the infusion of
new life into the property now known
as the Georgia & Alabama Railway.
Built upon the ruins of the old "S. A.
M." road, the line had no sooner
passed into the hands of the new or-ganization
than a spirit of enterprise
was manifested which has already
placed the Georgia & Alabama well in
the ranks of those roads which are
helping the whole South while imme-diately
benefitting themselves by vig-orouslv
aiding the development of the
country through which they run.
The Manufacturers' Record of
August 2, 1895, contained this an-nouncement
and prophecy
:
'The work of reorganizing the Sa-vannah,
Americus & Montgomery
under the title of the Georgia & Ala-bama
is at last practically completed
by the election of Mr. John Skelton
Williams, of Richmond, as president;
Cecil Gabbett, vice-president and gen-eral
manager; J. Willcox Brown,
treasurer, and W. W. Mackall, of Sa-vannah,
secretary. Among the direc-tors
are Mr. Adolph Ladenburg, of the
banking and foreign-exchange firm of
Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., of New
York; C. Svdney Shepard, of New
York ; J. W.' Middendorf, of Midden-dorf,
Oliver & Co., Baltimore bankers;
R. B. Sperry, Baltimore; John Flan-nery
and John K. Garnet,, of Savan-nah;
James D. Stetson, of Macon, and
S. A. Carter, of Columbus, Ga. Mr.
Williams, who is a member of the
banking firm of John L. Williams &
Sons, of Richmond, has been at work
upon the reorganization of the prop-erty
for some months, and is w^ell
known as a gentleman of ability and
energy, also as an expert financier.
Mr. \\^illcox Brown is president of the
Maryland Trust Co. of Baltimore,
while the majority of the other direc-tors
are connected with prominent
banking or business institutions. Th.e
IManufacturers' Record believes that
under the present management the
road will be operated for the best in-terests
of its stockholders and the sec-tion
of the South which it traverses.
"The Manufacturers' Record is in-formed
that the company will extend
its system into Savannah at once.
With Savannah as a terminus, the
Georgia & Alabama will be the short-est
and most direct route between Sa-vannah
and Montgomery. There is
every reason to believe that with the
through traffic which it will receive by
forming the direct route between these
cities, and added to its local traffic, the
earnings will materially increase this
year."
Not onl}- has every expectation here
hazarded been fully realized, but the
activity of the new management has
greatly exceeded the measure here put
upon it. One of the first things the
new company did was to secure by
perpetual lease from the Central of
Georgia Railway Company the fifty-eight
miles of road extending from the
449
450 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
terminus of the Georgia & Alabama
tracks at Lyons eastward to Meldrim
and to effect a traffic arrangement on
the seventeen miles from Meldrim to
Savannah by which the Georgia & Al-abama
secures the full benefit of the
Central's splendid terminals at Savan-nah.
Early in the year the Abbeville
& Waycross road was bought and ex-tended
to Fitzgerald. The entire main
line is being overhauled, and by cut-ting
down grades, straightening the
line where feasible, reballasting where
necessary and relaying a number of
sections with heavier steel rails, the
physical condition of the road is being
brought up to a high standard of ex-cellence.
The train service was also
immediately improved, the running
time between Montgomery and Sa-vannah
reduced to eleven hours and
an additional train put on, so there is
now a double daily passenger service,
with parlor cars and Pullman sleepers
and every comfort and convenience
provided by the best-equipped roads
in the country. Energetically reach-ing
out after business of all kinds, pas-senger
and freight, through and local,
there is every probability, from gains
so far made, that the company's gross
earnings for the first year since its en-trance
into Savannah—April i—will
exceed $1,000,000, which is 100 per
cent, increase over the previous year's
business. The line is by seventy-two
miles the shortest between Montgom-ery
and Savannah, and this fact, in
connection with its excellent train ser-vice,
is attracting an ever-increasing
volume of through business, both
freight and passenger. It is becoming
a favorite route for the metal and min-eral
products of Alabama and for gen-eral
Western products seeking ship-ment
through the port of Savannah,
and has become immensely popular
with the traveling public, who are af-forded
at Savannah the choice of a sea
voyage to Eastern cities on the splen-did
boats of the Ocean Steamship Co.
and the Merchants & Miners' Trans-portation
Co., or, if time is a special
object, connection may be made with
either of the two trunk lines that oper-ate
from Savannah north. In addition
to the Pullman car service now oper-ated
between Montgomery and Sa-vannah,
preparations are being made
to put on a through Pullman to run
from the cities of the Northwest via
the Georgia & Alabama through Sa-vannah
to Florida, giving passengers
in transit from six to twelve hours, if
desired, to view the many attractions
possessed by Savannah.
Enterprise marks every feature of
the management, and is conspicuously
manifested in the policy of giving
every assistance possible to the work
of developing the varied resources of
the territory through which the road
runs and to securing immigration to
occupy the hundreds of thousands of
vacant or but partially tilled acres that
are embraced in its tributary territory.
Immigration agents, in person and by
literature, canvass the West and
Northwest; statistics and interesting
facts concerning the attractions and
business opportunities existing in the
various towns and cities along its line
are disseminated, and widely-adver-tised
homeseekers' excursions are run
at various times throughout the year.
It may be readily seen, therefore, that
this road is destined to play an import-ant
part in the development of a por-tion
of the South rich in a great va-riety
of natural resources and abound-ing
in opportunities for the establish-ment
of many enterprises; and it is
furthermore a road which will be
found a factor of growing importance
in the handling of transcontinental
business.
The historical and beautiful old city
of Montgomery, the western terminus
of the Georgia & Alabama Railroad
and the junction point of some of the
most important roads in the South, is
interesting in many ways to the inves-tigator
of Southern conditions. It is
located at a bend in the Alabama river,
its site is pleasingly broken, while not
precipitously hilly, and its broad ave-nues
and tree-lined thoroughfares
lend a charming grace and dignity to
its aspect. Hardly anywhere can be
found a more noble prospect than is
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 451
presented by the sweeping stretch of
Dexter avenue from the imposing-fountain
up to the gUttering old white
capitol on the hill. It is in miniature,
it is true, compared with the Champs
Elysees or our own Pennsylvania ave-nue,
but within its limitations it is well
nigh a perfect picture, and to its beauty
is added the interest which attaches to
scenes of mighty conflict, for this
house at the end of the avenue was
the first capitol of the Confederacy,
was where Jefiferson Davis took his
oath of ofiice as President, was long
neatness not too frequently met with
in Southern cities. And as first im-pressions
are strong ones, such work
as has been done by Montgomery is of
unquestionable value wherever any
effort is to be made to attract outside
men and money.
There is an air of solid, substantial
prosperity about Montgomery, and in-vestigation
shows it to be an import-ant
business point, as well as a desir-able
place for residence. It is in the
midst of a particularly rich agricul-tural
section, and the vast mineral and
^
l^ji % till
Muiiii;(iiiiciy, Ahi.: State Capitol ami CoiilViltTaU' MdiiUuici
as the First Capitol of the Confefleracy. and .lefli
iuaun-tirated as I'resideiit here.
This iliiililiii.u \\a?
11 Ihivis was
known as "the White House of the
Confederacy," and as if to forever fix
this romantic interest, to identify in-dissolubly
the part it played in the
struggle of the "Lost Cause,'' there
has been erected by its side a towering
monument to soldiers of the Southern
armies who fell in defense of the gov-ernment
here first set up.
The visitor to Montgomery will be
first attracted by its well-paved streets
and its smooth stone sidewalks, which
cover all the main business portion of
the town and give an air of thrift and
other natural resources of Alabama
make possible a very large industrial
development here. The foundations
laid are broad and permanent. A per-fect
system of sanitary sewerage is in
operation, artesian wells supply a prac-tically
inexhaustible supply of pure
water, and the health-rate is conse-quently
so high that deaths, white and
black, average only a total of thirteen
to the thousand per annum.
As Montgomery is an old place,
coming into existence in 1819, and
having been incorporated ever since
452 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
1837, it goes without saying that so-cial
conditions are all that are ex-pected
of well-established Southern
cities. It has been the State capital
MontgojiH'iy. Ala.: Courthouse.
since 1846, and for more than half a
century has been a centre of graciovis
hospitalit}', culture and refinement.
Aside from the advantages of geo-graphical
position and the wealth of
its agricultural resources, Montgom-ery
has been aided in becoming an im-portant
point by the excellence of its
transportation facilities. The union
depot system, so convenient and ad-vantageous
to a city in e\^ery respect,
is established here, and the benefits of
quick and direct connection with roads
radiating in every direction is thus ob-tained.
Work is at present under way
on an imposing and spacious union
passenger station, and a mammoth
union freight depot is nearing comple-tion.
Transportation facilities are su-perlatively
excellent, some of the best
roads in the South centering here. The
Louisville & Nashville is here, giving
quick communication with Mobile,
Pensacola and New Orleans on the
south, and with Memphis, St. Louis,
Nashville, Evansville, Louisville, Cin-cinnati
and points beyond in the west
and north. The Western & Alabama
and Atlanta & West Point, which runs
from Selma via Montgomery to At-lanta,
enjoys a close traffic arrange-ment
with the Southern Railway,
whose passenger trains are now run
solid from New York via Atlanta,
Montgomery and New Orleans to
Galveston. The Plant system is here
through its Alabama A'lidland line,
and runs through trains to Savannah,
Charleston and all Florida points. A
branch of the Central of Georgia ter-minates
here, and thus, with the quick
and direct route via the Georgia &
Alabama to Savannah, it is seen that
the railway transportation facilities are
complete in every direction. And in
addition to the railroad transportation
there is the Alabama river, on which
boats run regularly to Mobile, thus in-suring
forever the lowest possible
rates on freight in and out of Mont-gomery.
To a degree, Montgomery enjoys
natural advantages over any possible
rival somewhat similar to those of
Memphis. Within a large surround-ing
section it is practically without a
rival, and in an area of 25,000 square
miles the local trade is preferably done
at Montgomery. Out of these condi-tions
a large jobbing trade has been
built up, which gives Montgomery a
place second only to Memphis as the
leading wholesale grocery point in the
South; and in other lines Montgom-ery's
jobbing trade is large and con-stantly
increasing. The wholesale
houses already include boots and
shoes, hats and caps, notions, dry
goods and liquors.
The total annual trade of Montgom-ery
is about $40,000,000, and it has for
years shown a constant and steady in-crease.
The average amount of sales
of staples marketed at Montgomery is
$23,000,000; the average yearly sales
of merchandise consumed in the terri-tory
trading here, about $12,000,000.
Without any excitement or the em-ployment
of other than the most con-
Montgonier.T, Ala. : Federal Buildiiu
(rostollice aud I''. S. Court.')
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 453
servative business methods, IMont- The banking capital of Montgomery
gomery is steadily marching on to the is about $2,000,000. In addition to
fulfilment of her destiny as one of the national and State banks, there are
most important trading and manufac- banks for savings, showing large de-turing
cities of the interior South. posits, and for the further benefit of
With the snap and push of Atlanta, people of small means there are num-for
instance, she might have made a erous national and local building and
greater noise in the world, and might loan associations.
have secured more than the 35,000 peo- Owing to the fertility of the lands
pie with which she is now credited, but surrounding Montgomery it is natur-her
people are proud of the fact that alh" a large market for cotton, corn,
no backward steps have been taken, hav, oats, potatoes, as well as fruits
and that all of her development has and small vegetables. In cotton re-been
along natural lines, has been sub- ceipts it is one of the leading inland
stantial and permanent. With so much markets of the world. The receipts
cotton at her doors, it would occur to bv years since 1887 are:
the casual observer that cotton mills }'^Jl^'- §qI®«o
, ,
. ,
, ISS i 99,5dJ
ougnt to be more extensively estab- isss 107,508
lished here, but in addition to the mill i^po '.'.'.'.'.'.'.]'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'..'.'.'.'.'.'.'. '. '. '.'.'..'.'.'.'. i45,'o45
now in successful operation, tiiere is i|^^
157187
being constructed a new $200,000 mill, isos '.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.['.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'. iiojio
with 10,000 spindles and 320 looms, 1S95 ;;;;;;:;;;;;;;;;;;;;'. .;;.';.".;;;;; ; i23iooo
which will be in complete order and "
qJ^' ^.^ount of its transportation fa-ready
to start by the first of next May. ^^-^^^ ^^^^ ^1^^ ^ ^^1^^^^^^ ^^ b^3i_
That the citizens o Montgomery are
^^^^^ transacted, Montgomerv is a par-not.
indififerent to their opportunities,
ticularly good cotton market, and
and are proceeding to utilize tnem is -.^^^ ^^^^^^ ^ l^i 1^^^. j^^^^ ^^^^ -^
shown m the fact that this new mill IS
^j^^ -^^^^^.-^^ ^-^-^^ ^^^^ ^^^^,^^^_ The
entirely a local enterprise, and the
,^^^ij. ^f -^ -^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^3^^ -^^ the
Stock was subscribed by the home ij-,,n,ense compresses of the city and
P^2P shipped to Eastern and foreign ports.
The various manufacturing estab- Through bills of lading are issued at
hshments of Montgomery show a wide Montgomerv through either the Gulf
use of the resources of the section al- or South and North Atlantic ports to
ready. There are some 130 establish- all ports or markets of Europe,
ments of various kinds, employing While surrounding Montgomery
2700 hands and turning out annually there are no vast tracts of unoccupied
products of about $10,000,000 value. lands, so that colonization enterprises
The articles include cotton goods of in the immediate vicinity are impos-all
kinds, cottonseed oil, fertilizers, sible, yet there are plenty of farms,
soap, sash, doors and blinds, brick, large and small, which are obtainable
barrels, staves, spokes and handles, in every direction and at reasonable
beer, whiskey, crackers, candies, ci- prices. Desirable farming lands near
gars, flour, ice, drugs, brooms, cloth- Montgomery can be bought for from
ing, jeans pants, carriages, lumber, $6 to $25 an acre, and most any kind
and there are planing mills, extensive of soil can be had, from gray oak and
boiler w^orks and one of the best hickory lands to alluvial bottom lands
equipped foundry and machine shops and the black, waxy prairie lands, be-in
the South. So that, while there still ginning south of the city. In
exist great opportunities for industrial this variety of soils, literally about
development, it is evident that the field everything required for the sustenance
has been by no means entirely over- and comfort of man and beast may be
looked either by home people or raised, and while cotton will doubtless
Northern men looking for a desirable still hold its sway here as elsewhere in
Southern field. the South, there is a growing disposi-
454 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
tion to supply all local demands with
home-grown products. There is al-ways
an excellent market at Mont-gomery
for all agricultural products,
and within recent years it has become
a big market for horses, mules and
cattle. Dairy farming and stock-rais-ing
have been more extensively en-gaged
in recently, there being some
twenty-five farms near Montgomery
principally devoted to these undertak-ing's
and all with marked success. But
Truck farming and fruit-i"aising
have been demonstrated to be highly
successful and remunerative, and not
only is the local market supplied, but
large quantities of fruits, vegetables,
melons and berries are shipped from
here to Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New
York and other States.
A well-equipped commercial and
industrial association is undertaking
to foster immigration and industrial
growth for Montgomery citv and
iMontgomery, Ala.: Dexter A\'eiuie. leadiiij;- to State Capitol.
the supply of these products is as yet
not nearly equal to the demand. The
great variety of grasses which grow-luxuriantly
here, the equable climate,
the reliable rainfall (about 54 inches
annually) and the certainty of a de-mand
for all products raised offer
strong inducements to a much greater
expansion of these industries.
A remarkably good and extensive
system of county roads is a factor in
the development of the agricultural in-terest
of this section, which must prove
to be of ever-increasing benefit and
importance.
county, and backed b}^ the railroads
and an adequate degree of co-opera-tion
on the part of the citizens it would
seem that the interested attention of
homeseekers and investors should be
attracted to the superior advantages
possessed in so many directions by the
city and county of Montgomery.
Along the line of the Georgia & Al-al^
ama Railway, proceeding eastward
from Montgomery, are some of the
most fertile and highly-cultivated
farms in Alabama. Statistics concern-ing
the counties of Alabama traversed
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 455
by the road are as follows (census of
1890):
OJ o o
2'"' 'S^T'O
9!a M?>p
<0 G O
s52
5 O M
,972
,220
,971
Montgomery ...740 56,172 45,860 739,516 55
Macon 630 18,937 19,099 316,365 47
Russell 670 20,521 20,721 318,550 54
While largely devoted to cotton-raising,
it will be seen from the fig-ures
given that these lands are well
adapted to general agricultural pur-poses,
and that grain-growing is al-ready
extensively engaged in. As the
Chattahoochee river is approached
the character of the lands changes
somewhat, and while not so produc-tive
as the black prairie lands around
Montgomery, they are still very fer-tile
and well adapted to general agri-culture,
stock-raising and fruit-grow-ing,
grapes especially doing well.
There are large quantities of hard-wood
timber along the streams in this
section, oak, hickory, poplar and ash
predominating, and a considerable in-dustry
is being developed in sawing
and shipping this timber for manufac-turing
purposes to various parts of the
country. As the more rolling and
broken lands of Eastern Alabama are
reached an increasing growth of yel-low
pine is encountered. These roll-ing
timbered lands are generally with-out
undergrowth, and are especially
adapted to stock-raising. Beef cattle
from this section are now shipped to
Montgomery, Atlanta, Charleston,
Savannah and Jacksonville. The
splendid grazing afforded by these
lands, in connection with proximity to
cottonseed-oil works, makes stock-raising
very profitable, and it is largely
engaged in. After grazing all summer
and fall the stock are put up and read-ily
brought to marketable condition
by being fattened on cottonseed meal.
Although not yet specially engaged
in, a large portion of this section is
well adapted to hog-raising, the quan-tities
of acorns and other nuts provid-ing
an abundantly nutritious mast.
There is some sheep-raising, and the
number of living streams, abundance
of shade and g"ood grasses afford ad-mirable
conditions for a large develop-ment
of this industry.
It is noteworthy that few sections
anywhere have better railway facilities
than this portion of Alabama, through
which the Georgia & Alabama road
runs. Four lines of railroad traverse
this section, so that no farm along the
line is more than ten miles from a com-peting
road, which gives assurance of
equitable freight rates and is a pledge
that each road will do all in its power
to encourage the upbuilding of the
territory that is immediately tributary
to it. Another item, outside of the
advantage obtained through having at
Hurtsboro a connection with a branch
of the Georgia Central, is the fact that
the Chattahoochee is navigable be-tween
Columbus and Apalacliicola all
the year round.
An evidence of the healthfulness of
the country, as well as the fertility of
the lands in the section between Mont-gomery
and the Chattahoochee, is fur-nished
in the fact that twelve flourish-ing
towns and small trading centres
have sprung into existence along
the line of the Georgia & Alabama
Railway since the construction of the
road six years ago.
Immediately on crossing the State
line between Alabama and Georgia a
difference is noted in the character of
the country. After passing over the
magnificent steel bridge which spans
the Chattahoochee a two-mile stretch
of fertile bottom lands is struck, not
exceeded in fertility by those of any
section. Running right up to the
tracks are the lands of Mr. E.
M. McLendon, who has success-fully
demonstrated the capabilities of
this section in a way interesting" to all.
His tract contains 1700 acres of the
famous Chattahoochee river bottom
lands, and he is successful on a big
scale as a dairyman, a stock-raiser, a
scientific farmer and a cotton-raiser.
Two miles east of the river is the
flourishing trading centre of Omaha,
another new town built up since the
railroad was completed. It is a grow-ing
cotton market, and boasts of one
of the finest water-powers of the State.
456 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
obtained from the Hamahatchee river.
This power is utilized to drive one of
the best equipped hulling- and ginning
plants in the South. Here is also found
one of the best beds of brick clay in
Montgomery, Ala.: City Hall.
the country. All the brick used by the
I'ailroad company is made here, and
the Omaha brick have been used ex-tensively
by builders elsewhere, nota-bly
in the handsome new courthouse
at Lumpkin, the county- seat of Stew-art
county.
Proceeding eastward from Omaha
the lands become more broken. The
country is well watered by living
streams, and along these streams are
some of the best farms in this section.
Attention is devoted to general ae'ri-culture,
cotton predominating, but di-versitied
farming is the rule instead of
the exception.
On the highest point between the
Chattahoochee river and Savannah is
situated the town of Lumpkin, a thriv-ing
business centre of 1500 people and
one of the healthiest points in the
South. Before the war the wealthiest
planters of this region lived at Lump-kin,
and there was more money here
than at almost any other point in the
State. The people are still noted for
their culture, relinementand hospitality,
and it is believed that when the advan-tages
possessed by the country around
Lumpkin have become more generally
known it will become one of the most
thickly settled portions of the State. It
is better watered by living streams
than any other county in the State,
and is not exceeded for stock-raising
and fruits. It is somewhat hilly, but
when the hills are set in Bermuda
grass and planted in orchards it will
become very like a paradise. Being
above the frost-line, the finest of
peaches are here a reasonably certain
crop, and there is inevitably bound to
be a large development of the fruit in-dustry
here. It is a srood cotton mar-
Mdiituoiiicry. Ala.: Court Scinarc and Ciiuuiicrce Street.
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 457
ket, between 6000 and 7000 bales being-marketed
here annually.
Xot far from Lumpkm is the new
town of Richland, at the junction of
the Georgia & Alabama with the Co-lumbus
Southern, a comparatively
new^ road, running from Columbus to
Alban}', a distance of eighty-two miles.
This road has just been purchased by
the Georgia & Alabama, and that
part of the road between Richland and
Columbus will hereafter be known as
the Columbus division of the Georgia
& Alabama, and the part between
Richland and Albany as the Albany
division. In accordance with the
characteristic enterprise of the Georgia
& Alabama, the old schedule on the
Columbus Southern was at once re-vised
and another train added, so as to
give three trains each way daily, and
this is now the quickest and best route
between Columbus and Albany and
all points on the Georgia & Alabama
Railway.
Richland is a substantially-built
town of about 1000 inhabitants, hav-ing
brick business blocks and a grow-ing
trade. Around here for a radius
of ten miles in every direction is a sec-tion
of red chocolate lands, the same
as characterize the country about Fort
Valley, Ga., in the centre of the Georgia
Peach Belt. As an evidence of the spe-cial
adaptability of these lands to
peaches it may be mentioned that the
finest carload of peaches ever marketed
in Chicago was taken from a three-year-
old orchard located within the
citv limits of Richland. Grapes also
do exceedingly well here, and so great
has the demand become that Richland-grown
grapes are sold before ripen-ing
on their reputation alone.
Richland is in the centre of Stewart
county, and is a very excellent trading
and distributing point. Here all agri-cultural
products do exceedingly well,
and the cheapness of the lands, from
$5 to $15 an acre, gives opportunity
for substantial profits in farming en-terprises.
Within this section of ten
miles in diameter is grown a peculiar
cotton of long fibre and unusually
silkv texture, coming nearer the long
staple than any other not the long
staple, and being in great demand at
enhanced prices by manufacturers of
cotton thread.
In Columbus the Georgia & Ala-bama
acquires as a feeder a manu-facturing
centre of great import-ance,
and Columbus considers it a for-tunate
thing to have become identified
with this enterprising railroad. Colum-
I3US, with a population now in city and
suburbs of some 33,000, seems des-tined
to become a manufacturing city
of the first importance, being sur-rounded
by a wealth of natural re-sources
and having within a distance
of two and one-half miles along the
Chattahoochee river water-power ca-pable
of developing an average of
40,000 to 50,000 horse-power during
ten months in the year, with a mini-mum
of 20,000 horse-power at the
lowest stage the river ever reaches.
While Columbus is already a manufac-turing
town, distinctively, with numer-ous
and varied industries of large mag-nitude,
so small a part of the splendid
water-power has as yet been utilized
that what has been done seems more
of a promise than a fulfillment. There
are but two developed water-powers,
both in the city limits, and with a total
of only about 6000 horse-power. Of
the 115 feet of fall within two and one-half
miles, eighty-two feet are as yet
undeveloped. Some years ago an as-sociation
was formed to develop the
upper falls. A tract of 355 acres of
land, known as North Highlands, ly-ing
along the river, and including one
of the most important of the falls, was
platted for factory sites and residences.
The electric cars were extended to it,
a fine casino and music pavilion were
constructed and a grand boulevard
built around the high, overhanging
cliffs. Plans were all but consum-mated
for building a dam and develop-ing
this as well as other powers in the
vicinity when the hard times brought
the negotiations to a standstill and
practical disintegration followed. The
boulevard is still a picturesque drive
and popular the year round, and the
casino and the rustic grounds swarm
45S GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
with merrymakers during a
good portion of the year, but
the commercial aspect of the
situation is in abeyance, wait-ing
the advent of means and
men who will seize the sin-gular
opportunity to utilize
a power greater than Colum-bus
yet possesses, greater
than is possible at almost
any other spot in the country
within two miles of the junc-tion
point of seven railroads.
But the power already in
use puts Columbus well in
the forefront of Southern
manufacturing cities. The
famous Eagle and Phenix
Mills, the oldest and the
largest, has a minimum of
4000 horse-power, with which
it operates three cotton mills
and one woolen mill, and the
city mills (flouring) will have
2000 horse power when im-proAcments
at present under
way are completed.
In addition to running the
mills, this power is utilized
to the vast advantage of the
whole city by the Brush
Electric Light & Power Co.,
a corporation of which Mr.
John F. Flournoy, of Colum-bus,
is president, and in
which his etforts have
secured the investment
of some $500,000 of Phila-delphia
money. M r .
Flournov is also president
of the Columbus Railway
Co., and these companies
operations ha\e
the mule from
car, consolidated
into one system,
literally covers the
provided a system
rhich
by their
banished
the street
the lines
which
town ;
of electric lightinj^
by March i will compre-hend
all the arc and incan-descent
service in the city,
and still reserving ample
power to rent to factories
of all kinds. The newspaper
offices, several clothing fac-
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 459
tories and others are now using this
power, and its adaptabiHty to every
kind of industry is demonstrated in a
contract recently made by which a
meat dealer gets the transmitted elec-tric
power applied to his sausage
grinder. To many manufacturers,
large and small, it is a big thing to be
relieved of the expense of putting in
boilers and engines, and this feature
of the industrial situation at Columbus
must prove a strong factor in attract-ing
outsiders.
The railroad company has done an-other
thing which, next to the availa-bility
of cheap and abundant power,
gives Columbus pre-eminence among
desirable factory locations. Included
in the twenty miles of road operated
by the company is a belt line, which
connects with all the roads entering
the city. Its tracks are laid wherever
there is an industry or a jobbing house
doing any business of importance, so
that cars are loaded and unloaded at
their very doors, and the former dray-age
charges of $5 to $8 a car are elimi-nated.
To the discerning observer it
is patent that these two features of
power and house tracks are alone suffi-cient
to insure the industrial and com-mercial
development of Columbus to
proportions far beyond those of the
present. But numerous other ele-ments
of expansion exist, among
which is proximity to the coalfields of
Alabama, which makes fuel so cheap
that some of the factories at Columbus
are successfully operated by steam.
The list of industries at Columbus
includes six cotton mills, with 79,992
spindles and 2822 looms, of which the
Eagle and Phenix Mills have 47,496
spindles and 1600 looms. The prod-uct
of the mills includes almost every
variety of manufactured cotton goods,
from the coarsest sheetings to the
finest print goods, which are marketed
all over the world. There are also
woolen mills, four clothing factories,
three iron and machine shops, very ex-tensive
plow works, two cottonseed-oil
mills, two of the largest flouring
mills in the South, one fertilizer factory
in operation and another much larger
one being built, four ice factories, two
barrel factories and various smaller in-dustries.
There is an abundance of
raw material of all kinds, and plants
for the manufacture of cotton, iron and
wooden products are certain to in-crease
in number. There are 150,000
bales of cotton handled in Columbus
annually, much of it an extra fine
staple, so that a choice at minimum
prices is afforded the manufacturer.
Columbus is an old and wealthy
city, and contains a number of citizens
of conspicuous enterprise. There are
five banking institutions, which afford
ample money for the needs of the mer-chants
and manufacturers of the city.
Here is located the Georgia Home In-surance
Co., one of the most success-ful
and extensive companies in the
South. The history of this company
is full of interest and value to anyone
investigating Southern institutions
and financial opportunities. Organ-ized
in 1859 to do life, fire and marine
insurance, with a capital of $300,000,
5000 shares at $60 par value, it had
hardly got started before the war came
on, and though continuing in busi-ness,
the end of the war found the
company in a somewhat involved con-dition.
Soon after the war the com-pany
passed into the control of Mr. J.
Rhodes Browne, a Northern man of
tact, ability and enterprise, and under
his judicious management it was soon
put upon a paying basis, doing a fire
insurance business alone. The stock
had depreciated till it had but little
value, and 2000 shares were bought by
the company and cancelled and the
value of the remaining 3000 shares
raised to $100 a share. The capital
stock has never been increased, re-maining
still at $300,000, but the com-pany
has steadily prospered, until to-day
it has a list of gilt-edged assets
aggregating $1,157,902, and its stock
can't be bought in any quantity even
at a price largely in advance of par
value. For many years past the com-pany
has paid an annual dividend of
12 per cent., which is of itself an
achievement equaled by mighty few
corporations South or anywhere else.
46o GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY
and yet the institution is a peculiarly
Southern one. While it covers a wide
range of country, and in its field is
well and favorably known and largely
patronized, no attempt is made to go
outside the South, the limits of its op-erations
being the Potomac and the
Rio Grande. It has achieved an envi-able
record for prompt and fair deal-ing,
and wherever known is looked
upon as one of the progressive and en-during
institutions of the country. Of
incidental interest is the fact that Mr.
Lambert Spencer, father of the South-ern
Railway president, Air. Samuel
Spencer, was secretary of the company
their capacity with tourists, who, find-ing
excellent accommodations at
hand, choose this mode of getting into
Floridian waters and among the
islands and coast resorts which are so
famous for the superexcellence of the
shooting and fishing they afford.
A fine agricultural country fur-nishes
a basis for development which,
mdependently of the industrial feat-ures,
would go far toward creating an
important trading centre here. Good
lands, a rich sandy loam predominat-ing,
are characteristic of Muscogee
county, and with a high health rate, an
equable climate, adaptability to a great
variety of crops and cheap
prices for lands, a large
immigration movement will
undoubtedl}^ be attracted.
The first colony settlement
in the vicinity of Columbus
has just been made by
for many years and until
his death in 1880, when he
was succeeded by Mr. Wm.
C. Coart, the present sec-retary.
In addition to its other
enterprises, Columbus has a
large jobbing business, cover-ing
eleven Southern States,
and representing dry goods,
clothing, boots and shoes, groceries, etc.
O'f course, river transportation the
year round must be reckoned as one
of the strong points Columbus pos-sesses.
Four lines of steamboats ply
the Chattahoochee between Columbus
and Apalachicola. These water lines
get the trade on both sides of the river
from thirty to fifty miles back, and, in-cluding
Columbus, make connections
with fifteen railroads at various points
along the river.
A feature of interest in connection
with steamboating is the fact that
these boats are frequently crowded to
Cohmibiis. Ga.: Undeveloped Water-Powers above the City.
a society of professional men, me-chanics
and farmers, with their fami-lies,
on a looo-acre tract twelve miles
from Columbus. The present mem-bership
of the colony amounts to
about 300, but it is expected that con-siderable
accessions to this number
will be made from time to time, as this
settlement is the outcome of a move-ment
inaugurated by a society in
Chicago some time ago, and the mem-bership
of the society includes repre-sentatives
in nearly every State in the
Union. The place chosen for the set-tlement
was selected bv a locating
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 461
committee acting for the society, and
had in its membership one man from
Ohio, one from Canada and one from
Florida. A great deal of time was
spent in looking for a desirable place,
and the people of Columbus and Mus-cogee
county consider the selection a
substantial recognition of their advan-tages.
While this is the only colony move-ment
to this vicinity, there has been
individual immigration from many
outside places for years, and some of
the most successful farmers, dairy-men,
fruit-raisers and truck-growers
here are immigrants. Dairying on a
scientific plan was first introduced by
men from Iowa and Ohio, and is now
engaged in by a number of people
with good profits. Fruit, grapes,
melons and truck are being raised
more and more each year, and the
profits warrant a much more extensive
prosecution of these industries. From
thirty to fifty carloads of Concord and
other grapes are annually shipped on
roads running out of Columbus; 1500
carloads of melons are handled
through Columbus, some of the
melons weighing from forty to sixty
pounds; turnips are raised weighing
fourteen pounds, from two and one-half
to three pounds being by no
means an uncommon weight, and
sweet potatoes, tomatoes, beans, etc.,
are thrifty and profitable crops. Pearl
or cat tail millet, Kaffir corn, milo
maize, amber cane and other forage
plants thrive like native grasses.
An interesting example of what en-terprise
and ability may do here is fur-nished
in the achievements of a
Frenchman named D. Liefrank, who,
ten years ago, took a badly-washed
hillside farm of fifty acres four miles
from Columbus and set it out in scup-pernong
grapes. The place was hardly
considered worth $5 an acre when he
took hold of it. He now has 4000 bear-ing
plants, which yield all the way
from two and one-half to four and one-half
bushels of grapes to the plant, and
he gets three gallons of wine to the
bushel, or a total annual yield of some
50,000 gallons of wine. As he under-stands
how to treat the wine, produc-ing
an article infinitely superior to the
oversweet, insipid stufT most fre-quently
encountered under the name
of scuppernong wine, he is enabled to
sell his entire product in New York
and Philadelphia at figures which
yield him an exceedingly handsome
profit on his labor and investment,
which, by the way, are greater than
might at first appear, as he never mar-kets
his wine till four years old. Of
course, it takes knowledge and pa-tience
to accomplish such results, but
that they have been accomplished es-tablishes
the capacity of the soil and
climate.
What is being done in a smaller way
all over this section, Mr. H. L. A\^ood-ruff,
a wealthy flouring-mill man of
Columbus, is attempting on a broad
scale on his farm of 607 acres fourteen
miles south of the city. He has set out
11,000 peach trees, 1000 KeifTer pear
trees, 1450 apple trees, 2500 paper-shell
pecan trees, 650 wild-goose plum
trees, 150 Botan plums, which he pro-poses
to increase to 11,000, besides a
number of English walnuts and mul-berry
trees. He has 1000 scupper-nong
grape vines and 45,000 straw-berry
plants, which he expects to
double in number by spring. This ex-tensive
place he has been carefully cul-tivating
for a number of years purely
as a commercial venture, and results
so far justify him in expecting profits
of 25 to 30 per cent, on the investment.
Throughout its length the country
traversed by the Columbus Southern
is a fine agricultural and fruit section,
and its speedy development may now
be confidently expected. Outside of
Richland, the important towns on the
line are Dawson, a thriving town of
2500 people, where a connection is
made with the Central of Georgia
Railroad, and Albany, the terminus,
which is one of the best cities of South-west
Georgia. Here connections are
made with the Plant system of roads,
the Central and with the boat lines
which ply the Flint river. Albany has
7000 population, fine schools, broad,
well laid-out streets, numerous fac-
462 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
Columbus, Ga.: City Mills and Water-I'ower.
tories and the largest wholesale gro-cery
house in Southwest Georgia. The
country around Albany presents a va-riety
of attractions to the agriculturist,
the fruit-grower and the truck-raiser,
and it has received a good share of the
immigration secured by Southwest
Georgia. Its location, its excellent
railway facilities, its river transporta-tion,
its healthfulness, its fine artesian
water—these added to the advantages
of climate and soil give to Albany and
its tributary country the promise of a
development of large importance.
Coming back to the main line,
shortly after leaving Richland, going
east, Webster county is entered, which,
according to its size, is one of the best
cotton and corn counties in the State.
Here the lands break off into gray
pine and oak. This county likewise
offers excellent inducements for stock-raising,
which is successfully pur-sued
by many of the best farm-ers
in the county. A number of
large streams flow through the
countv, completing the conditions
favorable to stock-raising. Preston,
the county-seat of Webster, is a thriv-ing
town, enjoying a good trade and
building up with the growth of its
tributary country.
No other town is reached until after
passing into Sumter county, the ban-ner
county of Southwest Georgia. It
has a greater variety of soils than any
other county through which the Geor-gia
& Alabama road runs, and is con-sequently
adapted to a wider range of
products, and it has moreover utilized
and developed its resources to a
greater extent than has almost any
other county in the State. It stands
easily first in number of bales of cot-ton
produced, in bushels of corn
raised and in other grains grown, as
evidenced by the census report of
1890 on counties in Georgia through
which the Georgia & Alabama road
runs
:
•- cjan oJOO OJSo OJtHa
^ g- -Sg^ %-o^ ^^1
a %B MS2 |"2 5?E
Stewart 440 15,682 19,351 34.3,243 65,478
Webster 230 5,695 6,895 158,212 18,340
Sumter 520 22,107 22,448 421,238 78,330
Dooly 780 18,146 15,780 363,880 38,543
Wilcox 500 7,980 2,595 100,758 17,046
Dodge 581 11,452 4,952 128,378 11,365
Telfair 420 5,477 2,007 41,787 65,036
Montgomery .. 720 9.248 2,215 168,865 23,428
Tattnall 1,100 10,253 2,957 157,587 10,562
Bryan 400 55,520 684 58,120 12,638
Cliatham 400 57,740 9 37,675 2,733
The fruit lands of Sumter are iden-tical
in character with those which
have made the Fort Valley district fa-mous,
and its list of profitable crops
includes about everything in the way
of grain, fruit and grasses grown in
the temperate zone. All kinds of stock
can be raised with advantage, and it is
furthermore a comfortable and healthy
place to live, the range of tempera-ture
being about 70° on an average,
providing against extremes both in
winter and summer. It has also some
good timber, the southeast corner es-pecially
containing a large tract of
long-leaf yellow pine, while along the
Flint and other rivers are quantities of
hai'd wood, oak, poplar, ash, gum,
etc.
An enumeration of the various
products of Sumter county resembles
somewhat a pag-e from the Agricul-tural
Department's report for the
whole country.
While changing conditions in the
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 463
South show every year an increasing
departure from the pernicious "one-crop"
practice formerly so generally
in vogue, cotton is still the king of
money crops, as it must ever continue
to be, for this is the one product which
commands money anywhere and at all
times. Constant agitation of the sub-ject,
and disaster attending some years
of abnormally low prices, have quite
generally induced planters through-
Farm Home in the Pine r.ell.
out the South to engage in more di-versified
farming, so that food sup-plies
are more nearly produced at
home than formerly, but large cotton
crops are likely to continue to be
raised in sections adapted to this
staple.
According to the census figures of
1890 there were 22,448 bales of cotton
raised in Sumter county, an average of
more than a bale to each inhabitant of
the county, and the ratio is about the
same each year.
The corn crop of Sumter county is
about 500,000 bushels a year, and
comes next in importance to the cot-ton
crop. The yield per acre is from
twenty to forty bushels, and it is, as a
rule, a certain and profitable crop.
Wheat is raised to some extent, and
where given proper care and attention
may be expected to yield from twenty
to thirty bushels to the acre, but it is
unlikely that it will be raised largely
on a commercial basis, such as is
grown being generally for home con-sumption.
Certain varieties of oats give an
abundant and reliable yield, ranging
from twenty-five to as high as seventy-five
bushels to the acre, and maturing-early
enough for a second crop on the
same land.
The usual Southern forage crops of
field peas, Bermuda and other grasses
give abundantly satisfactory results,
as do red and white clover, German
millet, etc. Some experiments in al-falfa
have shown quite marvelous re-sults.
On a 50-acre patch near Amer-icus
seven tons to the acre were raised
during the past year, and on a portion
of it seventeen cuttings were made
which yielded fourteen tons to the
acre. As the crop sells for $17 a ton,
and costs only about $4 to raise, there
^vas an exceedingly handsome profit
in the undertaking. The land on
which it was raised, by the way, re-cently
sold for $8 an acre, and prob-ably
couldn't command more than
double that price today, simply be-cause
of the large area of uncultivated
land.
Melons, truck and fruit must con-tinue
to receive increased attention,,
particularly at the hands of new-comers
to this section.
The Georgia watermelon has long'
l:)een a well-known visitor to the
Northern markets, and Sumter
county's quota is already very large.
With soil and climate perfectl}^
adapted to their growth, and because
of the small expense raising them en-tails,
there is a further large field for
developing- this industry.
Two crops of sweet potatoes can be
raised each season at small expense
and with little care, and conditions are
entirely favorable to the equally suc-cessful
cultivation of the Irish potato.
An industry which, while not repre-senting
a ver}^ large volume of busi-ness,
still shows such profits as seem
to promise extensive development, is
the growing of sugar-cane, of which
some farmers in Sumter county have
raised as much as $300 worth of cane
and syrup to the acre. On the bills of
fare of many Southern hotels will be
found Georgia cane syrup, and the in-quirer
will be informed that by many
people it is regarded as superior to
maple syrup. Another use of the cane,
AMERICUS, GA.: REPRESENTATIVE HOMES.
2. Mr. W. C. Carter. 1. Mr. Luther Bell.
4. Mr. W. B. Harrold. 3. Mr. G. W. Glover.
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 465
which presents a novel sight to the
Northern visitor, is made by children
chiefly, and consists of peeling the
stalk and chewing the pith. For this
purpose all the grocery stores in this
region will be found to keep a supply
of stalks throughout the season.
There are no extensive sugar-cane
plantations, like those of the Missis-sippi
river bottoms, and none of the
syrup is made into sugar, but where
a yield of $300 can be obtained off $15
an acre land it would seem that its
more extensive cultivation is merely
a matter of time.
In fruits, and especially peaches,
pears and grapes, the soil and climate,
as well as the results of efforts hereto-fore
made, justify the expectation that
fruit-growing on an extensive scale
for the Northern markets will increase
in magnitude and importance.
The raising of horses and mules is
engaged in to some extent, and condi-tions
and results are such as to en-courage
more extensive undertakings
in this line.
Dairy cattle thrive as well as any-where,
and in time will doubtless con-tribute
an important addition to the
products of the county.
The range of prices of Sumter
county farms is from $2 to $25, but
the average prices for such places as
would suit the immigrant and home-seeker
are from $7 to $15.
The character of the soils along the
line of the Georgia & xA-labama road in
Sumter county are red chocolate
lands, red clay lands, oak and hickory
gray lands, pine gray lands and red
lime lands, all good and adapted to
peaches, pears, grapes, grain, cotton
and grasses.
The first town reached after leaving
Webster county is Plains, so named
from being situated in a perfectly
level tract extending six or seven
miles in every direction. Here are
again found the strong red chocolate
lands, adapted to all farm products
and of the same character as the lands
around Richland. Cotton is an im-portant
item of farm products here,
there being some 6000 bales of cotton
marketed at Plains annually.
Two miles north of here is situated
Magnolia Springs, a famous and still
popular health resort, which in ante-bellum
days was an attracting point
for the wealth and fashion of a large
portion of the South. It is still much
frequented on account of the virtues
of its waters, and a movement is on
foot to put in adequate accommoda-tions
for summer visitors.
The next town on the line is Ameri-cus,
the county-seat of Sumter county,
the headquarters of the Georgia & Al-abama
Railway and the most thriving
city of Central Georgia south of Ma-con.
Though laid out in 1832, the
principal growth of Americus dates
back but a few years, 4000 of its 8000
inhabitants having been gained within
the past ten years. It is today a busy
and ambitious trading centre, and is
developing along lines which promise
continued growth. There are market-ed
in Americus from 30,000 to 35,000
bales of cotton annually, and including
those handled by the compresses the
total foots up some 60,000 bales an-nually.
There are three wholesale
grocery houses, doing a combined
business of about $1,500,000 a year,
and covering a territory extending
from Americiis in various directions
thirty to 100 miles. Other mercantile
establishments include a large whole-sale
and retail hardware house and
numerous well-equipped retail stores.
Industrial enterprises are repre-sented
by a cottonseed-oil mill, ferti-lizer
works, foundry and machine
shops, variety works and planing
mill, two cotton compresses, ice plant,
marble-yard and minor industries.
There is no cotton mill there at pres-ent,
but the abundance of long and
short-staple cotton raised in this vicin-ity
suggests the inevitable develop-ment
of this industry ultimately.
The particularly strong points in
favor of Americus are its transporta-tion
facilities, its healthfulness, its
pleasing physical features and the
abundant resources of the countr\-
tributary to it.
AMERICUS, GA.:
1. Jail. 2. Typical Old-Time Home, now used a&
3. Courthouse. Sanitarium.
4. City Hall and Water Tower.
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 467
Americus is the junction point of
the Georgia & Alabama and the Cen-tral
of Georgia Railroad systems. It
was the enterprise of Americus citi-zens
that inaugurated the undertak-ing
which has since become the
Georgia & Alabama road, and though
in the receivership and reorganization
which followed a great many of the
projectors and promoters lost a good
deal of money, it is unquestionably to
the building of that road that Ameri-cus
owes the impetus which has
doubled her population. Besides giv-ing
the important connections at
Montgomery and the ocean outlet at
Savannah, the Georgia & Alabama
insures competitive freight rates to
and from all points.
The Central has two branches at
Americus, one line running between
Americus and Columbus and the other
from Albany to Atlanta via Macon.
So Americus is in touch with every
railway system in the State.
The conspicuous healthfulness of
Americus, as evidenced by mortuary
statistics, is due hardly less to natural
causes than to the measures adopted
by her people to give the city the best
sanitation possible. A complete sew-erage
system was established a num-ber
of years ago, and the city is fur-nished
with artesian water of absolute
purity. It was of incalculable benefit
to the South that the feasibility of ar-tesian
wells here was demonstrated.
Col. John P. Fort, of Albany, is cred-ited
with having been the first to dis-cover
that this section may find the
purest of water by boring down from
600 to 1000 feet, and this discovery has
been utilized to the greatest advantage
all over South Georgia. The water
supply of Americus, which is distrib-uted
from an immense stand-pipe in
the centre of the city, has resulted in
practically eliminating the fevers
which formerly prevailed at certain
seasons of the year when water was
taken from shallow wells.
A tribute to the healthfulness of
Americus and the salubrity of its cli-mate
is furnished by the location here
of a perfectly-appointed sanitarium,
which especially aims to provide an
attractive retreat for patients who de-sire
to escape the discomforts of a
more rigorous climate. The winter
temperature here is much higher than
at Atlanta, for instance, being about
similar to that which has made of
Thomasville a popular winter resort.
Americus was selected by the founder
because of its natural healthful-ness,
excellent sanitary condition,
its pure artesian water and con-venience
of location at the junction of
two important railroad systems, which
afTord direct communication with
every section of the country.
The country about Americus is ele-vated
and rolling, and the city itself is
built upon a series of undulations or
hills. The general elevation is 450
feet above sea level, but there are dif-ferences
of 100 feet in elevations
within the city limits.
A striking feature of Americus is
the number of handsome homes and
the beauty of the tree-lined residence
streets. These evidences of taste and
refinement almost never seen outside
of old-established communities at once
commend Americus to the favorable
consideration of the visitor and the
homeseeker. When there shall have
been a more general adoption of street
paving and sidewalk improvements
the conditions will be complete for
making Americus one of the most at-tractive
cities of South Georgia.
In its public buildings, too, Ameri-cus
furnishes a conspicuous example
of the improved conditions which have
come to the South within the past few
years. Surrounding a park square are
a number of buildings which would do
credit to a place much greater in size
than Americus. The imposing Wind-sor
hotel, in a striking variety of
Romanesque architecture, marble-tiled
and lavishly finished throughout
in hard wood, occupies a full half
block. This fine hotel, one of the hand-somest,
architecturally, in the South,
was designed by an Atlanta archi-tect,
Mr. G. L. Norrman. Across the
square, in a row, are the 200-foot water
tower, the city hall, the most pictur-
468 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY
esque and inviting jail an "outsider"
ever viewed and the substantial county
courthouse, completed not long since
at a cost of $40,000.
Social conditions are all that misfht
m 111 ii'^! Ill
'IB '-Hi ^1
' C r
Aiuericus. Ga.: PostnfDcc in Jolinson iSc
Ilarrold Building.
be expected of a Southern city of
sixty years' standing, and furnish a
charming addition to the attractions
the homeseeker would here find. The
denominations are well represented in
the numerous churches established
here, and the free public school system
IS entirely adequate and liberally main-tained.
Americus has two daily newspapers,
morning and evening, creditable to a
town of its size and which are alive to
the importance of securing immigra-tion.
Indeed, it may be said that the
spirit of the entire community is dis-tinctly
favorable to the work of inter-esting
Northern people in the city and
its vicinity, and numerous efforts along
this line in the past have been warmly
seconded by the press and the people.
Naturally the Georgia & Alabama
Railway takes an interest in the prog-ress
of Americus. Here are its general
offices, and there is now nearing com-pletion
here a new and handsome pas-senger
station, such as cannot be found
at many places three or four times
larger than Americus.
Adjoining Sumter is Dooley, one of
the most remarkable counties in the
State and a conspicuous illustration of
the notable development following the
construction of the Georgia & Ala-bama
Railway. Ten years ago there
was not a village in the county with
over fifty people in it; today it contains
fifteen thriving towns, with popula-tions
running from 100 to 3500; has
at least 25,000 inhabitants in it; has a
taxable valuation of over $3,100,000,
with a continued, unbroken increase,
even 1896 showing an increase over
the previous year of $182,000. The
primary basis for this exceptional de-velopment
is found in the enormous
timber resources of this section. Be-ginning
at the Flint river, on the west-ern
limits of Dooley county, and con-tinuing
in an unbroken stretch to Mel-drim,
148 miles eastward, and extend-ing
from an average of twenty miles
north of the Georgia & Alabama road
to the Gulf coast on the south, there
was a long-leaf vellow-pine forest,
which, up to a few years ago, had
never been cut into. Although much
has been done toward developing the
great wealth of resources this area
contains, it has as yet been hardly
more than touched, and is today the
Americus, Ga.: Johnson & Harrold Ware-honse
and Yard for Cotton Storage.
largest body of standing long-leaf yel-low
pine in the world.
The lands of this forest, in their
adaptability to agricultural purposes,
i
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 469
are a surprise to everyone. They were
generally supposed to be absolutely
worthless, and have until within recent
years sold at fifty cents an acre. It
has now been demonstrated that ev-erything
that grows in the South will
grow to perfection on these lands, and
where the saw timber has been cut off
and the lands put in cultivation there
are today some of the finest farms in
the South. These lands are largely
settled by native Georgians, who have
here grown independent. And yet the
whole section was, until the construc-tion
of this road, an unbroken, unset-tled
pine forest.
Outside of their fitness for general
agriculture, these lands appear to be
peculiarly adapted to fruit-raising, as
is shown by the extensive and emi-nently
successful orchards at Tifton,
which place, while not on this road,
has identically the same character of
lands. At Tifton they got at it first.
but the same results are expected to
follow efforts made elsewhere in the
district. Immediately along the rail-road
the timber, being accessible, was
cut first, and in its place are now farms
and peach orchards. Along the line
many thriving towns have sprung up,
there being between Coney and Mel-drim
thirty-five towns, all new.
This entire region seems destined
to become one vast orchard, the cheap-ness
of the lands and the ease and
small expense at which an orchard can
be put out being altogether in favor of
this section. With the exception of
lands near the stations, these lands
can be bought for $3 an acre after the
millmen have cut over them. There
remains standing there timber it
doesn't pay them to cut sufficient to
do all fencing and, in some instances,
to furnish all buildings. A man with
$500 can go into the country anywhere
east of Cordele, get 100 acres of land,
fit it for tenancy, and start to farming,
and have on hand a debt of not over
$200. And he can arrange the pay-ments
on his lands just about to suit
his convenience.
Immediately following the construc-tion
of the Georgia & Alabama and
other roads through this section the
lumber and naval stores industries be-gan
to be extensively developed, and
now form a very large portion of the
business of the roads. On the line of
the Georgia & Alabama road alone
there are 100 saw mills, big and little,
many of which are among the largest
in the world, ecjuipped with the best
machinery, having electric plants, their
own railroads and every facility for
the economical manufacture of lum-ber
in its various shapes. These mills
have a capacity of about 1,500,000 feet
of sawn timber daily, the product of
which is shipped to all parts of the
globe. The tariffs the Georgia & Al-abama
road furnishes for transporting
the output of these mills cover 6000
points in the West and 8000 in the
Middle and Eastern States, and all of
these 14,000 points are used; that is,
lumber is shipped to everyone of
them from one or another of the mills
in this list.
There are eighty-one naval store
plants along this road, producing an-nually
600,000 barrels of rosin, 200.-
000 barrels of spirits of turpentine and
large quantities of tar and kindlings in
addition.
The naval stores are almost exclu-sively
marketed at Savannah, which
has for some years been the leading
naval stores market of the world, and
its influence in developing the re-sources
of this section, so thoroughly
covered by the Georgia & Alabama
road and its connections, is a power-ful
factor in the situation.
What has been accomplished in the
long-leaf pine section of South
Georgia, largely through the influence
of the Georgia & Alabama Railway.
is one of the most interesting and im-portant
features of Southern develop-ment
of the past few years. Not only
have numerous vast and valuable en-terprises
been inaugurated, but town-building
has followed on an extensive
scale, and in no other section have
there been more successful efforts
made at colonization and immigration
movements. The settlement of the Old
Soldiers' colony at Fitzgerald is the
470 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
most conspicuous example in this line,
but all along the Georgia & Alabama
road new towns have sprung up and
old ones received a revivifying im-pulse.
A good illustration of this is fur-nished
in the case of Cordele, in
Dooley county. Though not the
county-seat, it is the most important
point in the county, and is the largest
town on the main line of the Georgia
& Alabama between Americus and
Savannah. Yet eight years ago its
site was an old field, which contained
onlv a single house. Todav it has
tel, the Suwanee House, would, with
its private baths and other comforts,
be a credit to a much larger town, and
its advantages in every way, commer-cially,
industrially, socially and edu-cationally,
are superior to those of
most cities of 10,000 inhabitants. This
is so conspicuously true as to excite
the comment of even the casual ob-server.
"Cordele is a typical illustra-tion
of the industrial conditions in
what is called the new South," said one
visitor recently.
And all this has been accomplished
without any land boom. It is simply
Amei'icus, Ga. : Windsor Hotel.
three independent lines of railroad, has
sanitary sewerage, waterworks, electric
lights, an independent telephone sys-tem,
with connections taking in all the
towns for twenty miles around and fur-nishing
service at cost; it has a cotton
mill with 3600 spindles, foundry and
machine shops, cooperage works, fer-tilizer
works, variety works, bottling
works, ice factory, planing mills and
other smaller industries ; it has a large
and growing jobbing trade in the gro-cery
line ; has ample banking facilities,
and is in every respect equipped as an
important trade centre. Its chief ho-the
legitimate resvdts of an energetic
development of resources on business
lines alone. Today there is not even
a real estate agent in Cordele, and
while real estate values have steadily
increased, so that no one who has
bought property there is unable to sell
it at a profit, such sales as are made
are not for speculative purposes, and
prices have consequently remained on
a conservative basis.
Cordele's present railroads are the
Georgia & Alabama, the Georgia
Southern & Florida and the Albany
& Northern. The Wavcross Air Line
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 471
is now building to Cordele, and there
are other possibihties. A Hnk of
thirty-five miles between Cordele and
Hawkinsville would give Augusta an
outlet into Southwest Georgia, and an
extension of forty-two miles would
bring the Atlanta & Florida from Fort
Valley and thus give that road the ben-efit
of the connecting lines now enter-ing
at Cordele.
The timber and naval stores inter-ests
of Dooley county bring a cash
trade to Cordele the year round, which
is largely responsible for her continued
prosperity. The fourteen important
mills in the county have a capacity of
some 350,000 feet of sawn timber per
day, and it is all "bill stuff" for cars,
bridges, buildings, etc. They don't
cut "stock stuff," as a rule.
In addition to these interests, Cor-dele
is surrounded by a rich agricul-tural
section, producing abundantly
corn, long and short-staple cotton,
sugar-cane, peas, rye, oats, wheat and
hay. According to the last census re-turns,
Dooley county was in corn pro-duction
second to Sumter only of all
the counties in Georgia through which
the Georgia & Alabama road runs, her
product being 363,880 bushels, and
she was third as to cotton, with 15,780
bales. The soil is also excellent for
fruits of all kinds, and especially for
watermelons and grapes. It is inter-esting
to note that good lands, acces-sible
to railroads, can be bought for
from $3 to $15 an acre.
People who are looking at Southern
places from the standpoint of their de-sirability
for a residence will care to
know that Cordele lays claim to excep-tional
healthfulness on account of
its excellent water works and sewerage
system and favorable climate condi-tions.
It is stated that in summer the
thermometer seldom shows above 90°
heat, and that for a winter resort it
possesses all the virtues accredited to
the favorite spots in the Georgia pine
belt.
Being situated in what is called the
"rain zone," this section is not af-flicted
with the long droughts which
are common to many places during
the summer months.
Outside of the $65,000 hotel, the $22,-
000 opera-house, numerous churches
and excellent schools, there is a moral
atmosphere about Cordele which will
as strongly commend itself to many
homeseekers as will any of these in-ducements.
There has never been any
whiskey sold in Cordele, and the peo-ple
do not desire that it ever shall be
sold in the town.
The enterprising character of the
people of Cordele is evidenced by
three achievements of the past year.
First, it has within the year secured
competitive freight rates, and enjoys
the advantage of being what is termed
by the railroads a "basing point" for
freight rates, which means that it has
the same rates as Americus, Albany
and other competitive points. As a
result of this achievement Cordele al-ready
has four wholesale houses, and
others are coming.
The second stride forward this year
is one that saves thousands of dollars
annually to merchants and property-owners.
It is a reduction in fire insur-ance
rates, Cordele now being placed
on the second-class basis for insur-ance
rates, jumping at one bound from
fourth to second place. This classifi-cation
speaks for itself, and proclaims
the excellence of the city's water works
and fire protection.
The third progressive step for
the year has been the establishment
of a first-class system of free pub-lic
schools, which are now in success-ful
operation. All these improvements
have been made without any increase
in the tax rate of the city, which is only
I per cent., a rather uncommonly low
rate for new cities anywhere.
Cordele is a bright, clean town, and
its people are enterprising and indus-trious.
With its railroad facilities, its
timber and agricultural resources, and
its general attractiveness, it seems al-together
reasonable to expect a fulfill-ment
of its people's prophesy, that it
will control the trade between the
FHnt and Ocmulgee rivers and will
472 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
double its population within the next
five years.
After leaving Cordele the next point
of more than passing interest is Abbe-ville,
practically at the head of naviga-tion
of the Ocmulgee river and the
junction point of the Abbeville &
Waycross division of the Georgia &
Alabama Railroad.
Although Hawkinsville is the ac-tual
head of navigation, at some sea-sons
boats run no farther up than
Abbeville. This place of some 1500
population is receiving the benefit of
immigration, as are other portions of
Wilcox county, to which is being at-tracted
a thrifty class of settlers from
the West. At the corn and cotton ex-position
at Fitzgerald in September
the exhibit of Wilcox county products
was one of the most interesting and in-structive
of anything there seen. To
illustrate the adaptability of lands
Cordele, Ga. : Suwanee Hotel.
liereabout to any crops it may be men-tioned
that there is within five miles of
Abbeville a farmer who is growing
rich, devoting himself to the exclusive
raising of hay. He puts in from 300 to
500 acres annually, uses the latest im-proved
first-class machinery and sells
all he can raise right at home to local
trade at about $15 a ton. He cultivates
a mixture of native grass and German
millet, which is preferred to timothy.
The fruit industry is already being
developed in this section. Three miles
from Abbeville is an orchard from
which the owner last season netted
$350 on 100 crates of peaches, a con-clusive
evidence of the excellence of
his fruit, the usual price per crate of
average Georgia peaches being only
about $1.50.
The hard-wood timber interests of
this section are very large. There is
standing within a distance of twenty-five
miles north and south of Abbe-ville,
in the swamps of the Ocmulgee
river, cypress, ash, hickory, white oak,
elm, sycamore, sweet gum, etc., worth
fully $3,000,000. The oak and cypress
have been cut for years, but the supply
is still practically undiminished.
At Abbeville there are two big mills
engaged exclusively in the manufac-ture
of shingles and porch columns,
which are shipped to all parts of the
country.
There is here a first-class brick-yard,
with a capacity of 40,000 brick a
day, which are pronounced as good as
any made in the country—so good, in-deed,
that they have been in demand
at long distances from home, they
having been used even at Jackson-ville
in the new government building
there. There will hardly be further oc-casion
to ship them away, however, as
it is expected that Fitzgerald alone
will consume the output for some time
to come.
Extending from Abbeville to Fitz-gerald,
a distance of twenty-two miles,
is the Abbeville & Waycross division
of the Georgia & Alabama Railroad.
This road, prior to its purchase by the
Georgia & Alabama, was nothing but
a poorly-constructed, indifferently-managed
country railroad. The loca-tion
at Swan of the colony city of
Fitzgerald made it necessary for this
road to be put in good shape and ex-tended
some seven miles to that point.
The Georgia & Alabama bought the
road January 28 last, and on Febru-ary
14 ran freight trains into Fitzger-ald,
and in ninety days from that date
had delivered 700 carloads of immi-grants'
movables, stock, provisions
and other freight. A large force was
then put to work rebuilding the road.
Cuts were set back, fills widened out.
right of Avay cleared back, trestles re-built
and a telegraph line erected, and
today this division is in as good shape
as any road in the State. In Fitzgerald
the handsomest passenger station in
the State was erected, the design of
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAIUVAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 473
native pine logs, hewn and polished,
being strikingly unique. A freight
station and platform, capable of hold-ing
I GO carloads of freight, was
erected, and a freight-yard laid off that
will hold 200 carloads of freight.
A double daily service is operated
on this branch, making the service as
most casual reference to the work of
Southern development, for nowhere in
recent history of migration has a more
interesting event occurred than the
coming of the veterans of the North-ern
armies to this section of the far
South. Indian reservations suddenly
thrown open to white settlement have
FITZGERALD, GA.;
1. Block of Brick Stores. 2. G. & A. Ry. Freight Depot.
3. G. & A. Ry. Passenger Station.
good as that on the main line. Being
the shortest and most direct line from
all Southern and Western points, it is
a favorite route for colonists and their
freight destined to Fitzgerald.
About Fitzgerald itself more than
a passing word is deserved in even a
shown some unique examples of or-ganized,
hereditary land-hunger, but
there has been no parallel to this
invasion of South Georgia by the
members of the old soldiers' colony.
When the government offers a body
of land to homeseekers nowadavs the
474 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
event becomes dramatic, because of
the ensuing scramble to get the pick
of the lands at the price which Uncle
Sam, singularly enough, puts upon all
his acres, good, bad and indifferent.
But here is a case where some 10,000
settlers simply moved in, quietly, un-ostentatiously,
without excitement and
with no stronger inducement than the
advantages of contiguous lands at a
cheap price and in a locality possessing
promising agricultural possibilities
and with mild and healthful climate.
They came by wagon and by train
from all over the Middle West and
Northwest, and within a year have
built a flourishing city in the midst of
what was till then an unbroken pine
forest.
It is not to be imagined that the col-ony
is composed of war-worn and
decrepit old soldiers. It is, on the
contrary, a community of active, alert,
industrious, energetic citizens from all
parts of the country.
There is the element of romance in
the settlement of this colony. Its lo-cation
here is directly attributable to a
suggestion of Mr. Richard H. Ed-monds,
editor of the Manufacturers"
Record. In the fall of 1894 a failure
of crops had brought want and suffer-ing
to many farmers of Nebraska and
other portions of the Northwest. The
South had that year been blessed with
an abundant harvest of grain, and to
Mr. Edmonds occurred the idea of
sending to that drought-stricken sec-tion
a portion of the bounty which the
South so universally enjoyed. The
idea was embodied in an interview,
which was sent out broadcast by the
Associated Press. Following this, Mr.
Edmonds appealed to the presidents
of Southern railroads, the governors
of the Southern States and others in
authority. The suggestion was re-ceived
as an inspiration, and the ap-peal
was immediately and heartily re-sponded
to. Governors of Southern
States telegraphed their hearty in-dorsement
of the proposition, and rail-way
presidents volunteered their ser-vices
in collecting and distributing the
contributions. The result was that
trainloads of supplies were collected
and transported to the needy North-west,
and the eyes of the whole coun-try
were opened to the agricultural
possibilities of the South. Mr. P. H.
Fitzgerald, of Indianapolis, had or-ganized
a plan to found a colony of
veterans of the Union army, and on
seeing this exhibit of Southern re-sources
a locating committee was sent
South. After much investigation, it
was finally, in the fall of 1895, deter-mined
to make a selection of some
hundred thousand acres located in the
pine forests of Wilcox and Irwin
counties, Georgia, and to this wilder-ness
the settlers soon began to wend
their way. The plan of the enterprise
provided for an allotment to share-holders
in the company of town lots
and farms of five, ten, twenty and forty
acres, and none but stockholders were
eligible as original settlers. At the
time of selection the company num-bered
about 50,000 members, scattered
all over the North and West, the
scheme of the organization providing
for benefits, somewhat on the building
and loan association plan, not only to
intending colonists, but to all share-holders
as well. Within the first three
months after the site had been selected
1500 people had arrived at the place
which became known as Fitzgerald.
It was a typical pioneer town, and for
some time the inhabitants endured all
the hardships and discomforts which
attend conditions of primitive civiliza-tion.
There was no railroad running
into the town until several months
after the location had been made, and
tents and "shacks" furnished all the
hospitality enjoyed by visitors and
settlers alike. Out of the chaos, how-ever,
order was speedily resolved.
With the energy of a veritable "boom"
town or prosperous mining camp con-ditions
were evolved which trans-formed
the "Shacktown," as it was
called, into a habitable city of about
5000 souls. The Georgia & Alabama
road came in from the north and
the Tifton & Northeastern from the
south, and enterprise was the watch-word
of the hour. Todav, after an ex-
GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY. 475
istence of practically only a year, there
is in the city and on the adjacent lands
of the colony a population of some
10,000 people, and accessions are be-ing
made continuously. The city has
a number of brick business houses, ev-ery
branch of mercantile enterprise is
represented, and a considerable start
has been made in the establishment of
manufactures. There are thirteen
saw mills on the colony grounds cut-ting
timber both for home consump-tion
and for the market. There are
four planing mills and two mills which
manufacture doors, sash, blinds and
general mill work; there are cornice
works which compete with the largest
firms in their line in the South; there
are two ice plants, a cotton gin, two
bottling works and a bed-spring fac-tory;
a cotton mill to employ 11 00
hands is under negotiation, and a can-ning
factory is to be established in the
spring. The colony company has
spent some $30,000 for street improve-ments,
grading, etc., has built and
equipped two schoolhouses at a cost
of $6000, and is now finishing a four-story
hotel, with 128 feet frontage,
which will cost when complete aboul
$35,000. It will be provided with every
comfort known to modern hotel ex-istence,
and will cater to the tourist
business, which annually invades the
South. Until the present Georgia leg-islature
convened the city was without
a charter, but with incorporation a
number of public improvements—^ar-tesian
water, sewers, street paving,
etc.—are expected to be introduced
without delay.
The spirit of the people of Fitzger-ald
v/as manifested in a striking man-ner
by the inauguration of a corn and
cotton exposition during last Septem-ber.
Almost literally an entirely ex-temporaneous
afifair, being thrown
open to the public within ninety days
from the time it was first thought of,
it was a remarkable showing for a
town of barely nine months' existence,
and it is doubtful if, under like cir-cumstances,
any such an exposition
was ever before seen. The adapta-bility
of the pine forest soil to any kind
of crop was demonstrated in a striking
manner by the displays made at this
exposition, for it would be impossible
to find finer cotton, corn, oats, grasses,
cane, fruit and vegetables than were
collected hert irom farms in this im-mediate
vicinity. Ahhuugli the soil is
light and sandy, it responds readily to
proper treatment. In this district, an
area extending, by the way, from Se-ville
down to the coast, long-staple
cotton is produced, and already 50,000
bales are annually shipped over the
Georgia & Alabama Railway to Sa-vannah,
where it brings from fourteen
to sixteen cents per pound.
Truck farming, grain-growing and
fruit-raising will all be profitably en-gaged
in, and various lines of manu-facturing
will be established. There
are, as may be expected in this as in all
communities, some dissatisfied per-sons.
These come and go, and, going,
their places are taken by those who,
not looking backward, put their shoul-ders
to the wheel and cast their for-tunes
with their fellow-workers. The
colony is growing continually, and the
people are well pleased to have es-caped
the rigors of a Northern climate,
where nine months' work was required
to provide the mere necessities of food,
clothing and shelter. Thousands of
new acquisitions are expected in the
city and on the colony farming lands
yet unallotted, and the colony com-pany
feels certain that before the close
of 1897 there will be such an increase
in population and such a substantial
development of the interests and re-sources
of the community that its es-tablishment
on a permanent basis of
prosperity will be universally con-ceded.
This colony enterprise is an exceed-ingly
interesting experiment, and its
progress will be watched all over the
Union. While it has been the subject
of considerable adverse criticism, and
some writers have publicly predicted
its ultimate failure, there is no doubt
whatever in the minds of its friends
and of entirely impartial investigators
that conditions make possible the most
abundant success. While early in the
476 GEORGIA & ALABAMA RAILWAY AND ITS TERRITORY.
spring there was a good deal of sick-ness
in the colony, a general clearing
up, and the adoption of sanitary re-forms,
were followed by a degree of
health not far behind that of the most
favored communities. An artesian
well has solved the problem of pure
water supply, and soon the city will
have a system of water works which
will give her permanent immunity
from liability to such mild types of
sickness as have existed there.
From the records of the health offi-cer
and the keeper of mortuary rec-ords,
the officials of the Georgia &
Alabama Railway have compiled the
following statement of deaths and
causes of death at Fitzgerald during
the twelve months ending August 15,
1896, this being the first year of the
city's existence: The total number of
deaths was 107; the number under ten
years of age was thirty-nine, and over
tifty years of age, fifteen. The num-ber
dying from accidents or from old
and incurable diseases was twenty-six
;
from cholera infantum and child-birth,
twelve; from dysentery and
malarial causes, twenty, and from
other diseases, forty-nine.
Along the eastern section of the line
an important element of strength of
the Georgia & Alabama road is the
volume of business secured from trib-utary
lines, short roads and tramways,
which furnish contributions of lumber,
naval stores and farm products seek-ing
shipment through Savannah. The
change from the conditions which ex-isted
in this section a few years ago is
really remarkable. There are some
thirty towns between Abbeville and
Savannah, and all of them are pro-ducers
of business, so much so that
most any day a freight train which
leaves Abbeville with ten cars will have
grown to sixty by the time it gets to
Savannah.
At Pitts, a road comes in from Haw-kinsville,
bringing valuable consign-ments
of lumber and naval stores. At
Collins there is the Stillmore Air Line,
reaching the prosperous towns of Still-more
and Swainsboro, and bringing
to the Georgia & Alabama the prod-ucts
of one of the best sections of
Georgia, a territory which annually
produces from 10,000 to 20,000 bales
of Sea-Island long-staple cotton. Here
also the Collins & Reidsville road
makes a contribution of valuable
freight destined for the port of Savan-nah.
At Cuyler, the Cuyler & Woodburn
road contributes not only naval stores
and lumber, but also hundreds of car-loads
of watermelons and vegetables
consigned to Eastern markets. On
this line, though only twelve miles
long, there are raised annually 200 car-loads
of watermelons and large quan-tities
of Irish potatoes, beans and other
early vegetables.
A valuable connection is also made
at Helena, where the road crosses the
line of the Southern Railway, afford-ing
communication with Macon, At-lanta
and the Northwest, and on the
South with the seaport of Brunswick,
the South Atlantic coast and Florida
points.
Reference has been made to the
splendid terminal facilities enjoyed bv
the Georgia & Alabama at Savannah
and its connections with North and
South trunk railroads, the ocean
steamship lines to Baltimore, Philadel-phia,
New York and Boston, and the
recently-established direct lines to
Europe. Savannah, the most import-ant
South Atlantic seaport, the fore-most
market in the world for naval
stores, the third largest cotton port
and one of the most interesting cities
of the South to visitors, has secured an
ally in the Georgia & Alabama which
will be of immense and increasing
value. This splendidh'^-managed road,
with its alert officers and pronounced
geographical advantages, will draw
new trade from the Northwest, will de-velop
the country through which it
runs and will be found a most import-ant
factor in swelling the export trade
and the commercial importance of the
city of Savannah.
THE REMAKING OF THE SOUTH.*
By Henry M. HoUaday.
(Continued from Last Number.)
In reviewing the progress of the
South for the past thirty years two
important difhculties which she has
had to overcome and with which the
North and West did not have to con-tend
should be borne in mind. For
fifty years abundant capital has poured
into the West, and with it or preced-ing
it, what is of far more importance,
millions of men—men of bone and
brawn, of energy, of skill, of education
and of genius. Into the West has gone
in large measure the very flower of
the manhood of New England and
the North. The South has made the
fight for life and prosperity with little
outside help. Capital long turned
from her. Immigrants passed her by.
It is still a subject of remark when a
man born in the new West rises to dis-tinction.
It is equally rare to hear of
one in the South who is not a son of
the soil.
Another fact is worthy of note in
considering Southern progress. The
textile industries of New England and
the iron industries of Pennsylvania re-quired
the fostering care of a high
tariff to protect them from European
competition. The South has had to
meet the competition of New England
and Pennsylvania in an open market.
In capital, in skilled labor and in ex-perience
in manufacturing and trad-ing
the disparity was not less between
the South and the North than between
the latter and Europe. The South has
enjoyed no such immunity as that
which has placed New England and
Pennsylvania among the richest and
most populous communities of mod-ern
times. But it is no longer denied
that the North cannot maintain a mo-
*Copyrighted, 1896, by Henry M. Holladay.
nopoly of the iron and textile indus-tries
in America. It is even doubtful
whether their supremacy must not
pass from them. This is true not be-cause
these industries of New Eng-land
and Pennsylvania are likely to
decrease or even cease to grow; but
because the natural and healthy de-velopment
of the South must, at a day
wdiich is not far distant, put her upon
an equality with New England and
Pennsylvania in manufactures of cot-ton
and iron.
This is not a political essay, and we
have nothing whatever to do with the
bearing of the development of the
Southern cotton-textile and iron in-dustries
upon the question of a tariff.
To the free-trader the facts which are
now universally admitted may seem
convincing evidence of the truth of
his belief. The protectionist may find
in them proof that nature, in a fit of
unwonted generosity, has lavished
bounties upon the South in sun and air
and soil and mineral wealth which
energy and enterprise are fast con-verting
into a Chinese wall of protec-tion.
Whatever theory may best serve
the whim of the doctrinaire, the
schemes of the politician or the pur-pose
of the practical man of business,
the one fact which concerns us here
cannot be denied. This broken, con-quered,
war-swept, poverty-stricken
land—this home of "ignorant, brutal
and degraded negroes and slothful,
efTete and degenerate white men"
—
has for the past thirty years produced
cotton in abounding quantity, sufifi-cient
to clothe more than half the
world and to sustain far from the land
where the staple is grown one of the
largest manufacturing industries upon
478 THE REMAKING OF THE SOUTH
which modern civilization is depend-ent.
More than this, it has won from
the heart and the hps of the most pro-gressive,
the most energetic, the most
inventive, and, in an industrial sense,
the most aggressive community of the
nineteenth century a recognition and
acknowledgment of the South's ca-pacity
to meet any and all competitors
in the production of pig iron and the
coarser grades of cotton textiles.
The facts which have been briefly
and imperfectly set forth in the pre-ceding
pages give cause for pride and
hope to all patriotic Americans. They
show that the growth of the South
has been steady and healthy. They
afford evidence of a kindly sun and a
generous soil, of balmy air and plen-teous
showers, of vast mineral wealth
and of inestimable natural advantages
for agricultural and manufacturing
industries. They clearly indicate that
the South has now reached a stage of
development when her people may
avail themselves of these advantages
and draw freely upon the treasures
which nature has provided. But bet-ter
than this, what has been accom-plished
shows the awakening of hope,
enterprise, emulation and self-confi-dence
in her people. The facts we
have noted testify to the sturdy virtues
and the true metal of her men. They
evidence a willingness to comprehend
new conditions, adaptability to meet
them and the determination to make
the best of them.
In frankness it must be said that
they have much to be desired. Al-though
the growth and progress of
the South has been great, although
the aggregate value of cotton which
she has produced in the past thirty
years has brought a vast fund of
wealth into her borders, the South is
still poor. She is far to the rear of
the most progressive communities.
At best many years must pass before
she can hope to rival or even approach
them in wealth, in the comforts of life,
in educational advantages or in liter-ary,
scientific and artistic attainments.
Before her are long years of plodding
labor, of untiring energy, of syste-matic
effort, of patient self-control, of
infinite self-denial, of prudent fore-thought,
and, above everything else,
of small economies and cultivation of
habits of thrift.
But without losing sight of the diffi-culties
which lie before her people, of
the weaknesses they must conquer, of
the sins they must amend, there is still
good cause for faith in her future. In
her faults she is distinctive, but not pe-culiar.
From sin and from folly no
people is exempt. We may trust in
the benign effect of natural law upon
freemen as they grow in w^ealth and
enjoy better educational advantages.
The best idea of the possibilities of
the future for the South may be ob-tained
from a glance at the advan-tages
she enjoys. Without pausing to
prove what is self-evident, or to dem-onstrate
what is recognized and ac-knowledged
by the common consent
of well-informed men, these may be
briefly stated:
1. A mild and equable climate re-duces
the cost of dwellings, fuel,
clothing and food to a minimum; and
farming, milling, manufacturing, com-merce
and other industries are unin-terrupted
by winter. Thus several
months are added to the working year
under less trying conditions than in
more northern latitudes. For the
same reasons the South possesses ex-ceptional
advantages for breeding and
fattening live stock and for producing
milk, butter and cheese.
2. The South produces all the rice
grown in this country; 75 per cent, of
the tobacco, and 93 per cent, of the
sugar. Her capacity to increase her
production of these crops is practi-cally
unlimited. Mr. J. R. Dodge, the
statistician of the Department of Ag-riculture,
in 1891 said: "One-tenth of
the area of Florida is fifteen times the
entire breadth of the sugar-cane area in
the United States in 1880, situated sev-eral
degrees of latitude south of ex-isting
plantations, requiring only a
system of drainage to become the best
cane lands of the United States."
3. The production of sub-tropical
fruits and nuts and the early fruits of
the temperate zone are already large
industries, and with the growth of the
THE REMAKING OF THE SOUTH. 479
country and better, quicker and
cheaper facilities for transportation
must become of great importance.
4. Extending- over a wider territory
and giving employment to a greater
number of laborers is the trucking in-dustry.
The fields in which early veg-etables
and melons are grown for the
N^orthern markets stretch from Ches-apeake
bay to the Gulf and from the
Atlantic to the Mississippi. In thirty
years this industry has grown to di-mensions
which greatly affect com-merce
and transportation, and its fu-ture
is limited only by the growth and
wealth of more northern States.
5. The South is now richer in tim-ber
than any other part of the Union,
and a great development in the lum-ber
trade and in manufactures of wood
is inevitable.
6. The production of cotton is a
source of wealth, the future of which
may be judged by the past. It need
only be mentioned here.
7. It is now an accepted fact that
the South enjoys unrivalled advan-tages
for the cheap manufacture of the
coarser grades of cotton textiles. The
growth of this industry is, at this time,
the most striking feature in the devel-opment
of the South. Naturally and
in due season will follow manufactures
of the finer grades of cotton textiles
and the growth of kindred industries
which group themselves about the
parent industry.
8. The growth of the Southern iron
industry has been shown in the pre-ceding
pages. Its vigor and continued
growth are beyond doubt or cavil,
and, following the production of pig
iron, must come the development of
the iron and steel industries in all
their varied and manifold forms.
9. The South is known to be rich in
many minerals besides iron and coal,
such as salt, sulphur, phosphate rock,
building stone, clay, manganese and
gold, and the industries to which
these must give rise will have an im-portant
bearing upon her develop-ment.
10. The mountain range of the Al-leghanies,
extending from the Vir-ginias
to Alabama, with a vast number
of streams falling from 1000 to 2000
feet from the plateau to tidewater,
gives the South water-power widely
distributed, easily harnessed and of in-calculable
value. This one resource,
as yet practically untouched, is suffi-cient
to give a development and diver-sification
to the industries of the South
which should make her rich.
11. For purposes of navigation and
trade the greater portion of the South
is a vast peninsula across the neck of
which a line may be drawn from
Washington to Wheeling. From
Chesapeake bay to the mouth of the
Mississippi the ocean washes her
shores, penetrates far inland with
many estuaries, and affords facilities,
for a vast coast trade. The opening
of the Chicago drainage canal will
mark a new era in the development of
the great central valley of the Union..
The Mississippi and its tributaries,
must in a few years become the great-est
of all traffic-bearing waterways.
This will bring the South into close
business relations with and give her
cheap transportation to the best mar-kets
of the world. The possibilities
of this great enterprise are too vast
for more than mention here. The
opening of our inland waterways to
commerce means much to the whole'
country, but to no section does it
mean so much as to the South.
12. A ship canal uniting the xA.t-lantic
and the Pacific is a national ne-cessity.
Public opinion is fast crys-tallizing
on the subject and will not
brook many years' delay. This canal
will put Southern seaports close upon
the route of commerce flowing be-tween
the Occident and the Orient. It
will make the opportunities and the
advantages of the South for trade
equal to the advantages which she
now enjoys for agriculture and for
manufacturing.
13. The South is fast becoming the
great winter resort for invalids, tour-ists
and men and women of leisure
and fashion. A line of luxurious hos-telries
now stretches from Hampton
Roads to Punta Gorda in Southern
Florida. Winter homes built b\
Northern people are becoming a feat-
480 THE REMAKING OF THE SOUTH.
ure of Southern life, and the tide of
visitors steadily rises as wealth in-creases
and the conditions of life be-come
easier. Man is growing as mi-gratory
"as the birds, and follows in
their wake when they wing their
flight southward at the approach of
winter. The money which is thus
brought into the South is not to be
overlooked, but vastly more import-ant
are results less apparent to the
casual observer. The better knowl-edge
which the people of the North
and the South obtain of one another
leads to closer business and social re-lations
and to broader and more lib-eral
ideas upon both sides.
14. In an area so vast as the terri-tory
embraced by the Southern States
and so sparsely settled, new sources of
wealth, as yet unthought of, must in-evitably
come to light and give rise to
new enterprises and new industries.
Upon this we may rely as confidently
in this age of invention and discovery
as upon the assured growth of the
cotton crop.
The future growth of the South in
wealth and population must have an
important meaning to the whole
country. But no true idea can be
formed of how vitally this subject con-cerns
the nation unless we keep con-stantly
in mind the vastness of the
area embraced by the Southern
States. This can be appreciated only
after a comparison with the territory
of other States of the Union and with
the great powers of Europe. The
thirteen Southern States have an area
of 818,065 square miles. The States
of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con-necticut,
New Hampshire, Vermont,
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylva-nia,
Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan and Wisconsin have an area
of 386,690 square miles and a popula-tion
of 30,000,000. When the popula-tion
of the South becomes as dense as
that of the Northern States which
have been named it will have a popu-lation
equal to the present number of
inhabitants of the whole Union.
France covers an area of 204,177
square miles, or about one-fourth as
much as the South. Its population is
38,218,903. If the South were as pop-ulous
it would have more than 150,-
000,000 inhabitants.
The area of the German Empire is
211,108 square miles, a little more
than one-fourth as great as that of the
South. Its population is 49,421,064.
If the South were as densely settled
it would have more than 190,000,000
people.
Austria-Hungary has an area of
201,591 square miles, and its popula-tion
is 41,827,700. With the same
number of people to the square mile
the South would have 169,000,000.
The area of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland is 120,973
square miles, and its population is
now more than 38,000,000. ' If the
South were as densely settled it would
have 256,000,000 inhabitants.
The kingdom of Italy embraces an
area of 110,665 square miles, and its
population is 29,699,000. If the South
had as many people to the square mile
its inhabitants would number 219.-
000,000.
The area of the Netherlands is
12,680 square miles; the population is
4,450,870. If the South were as
densely populated it would have 287,-
000,000 people living within its bor-ders.
Belgium has an area of 11,373
square miles, and its population is
6,030,043. If the South had as many
people to the square mile as Belgium
its population would be more than
430,000,000.
Now, if we take six of these coun-tries
and sum up their aggregate area
and population we have the following
result:
Sq. M. Population.
France 204.177 38,218.000
German Empire 211,108 40.421,000
Austria-Hunsarv 201,591 41.827,000
United Kinsdora 120,97.3 .38,000,000
The Netlierlands 12.680 4,450,000
Belffinm 11.37.3 6,030,000
Total 761,902 177.946,000
Here we have six countries whose
aggregate territory is many thousand
square miles less than the area cov-ered
by the Southern States, but
whose population is 177.000,000.
These countries are divided by laws,
by language, by race and by national
THE REMAKING OE THE SOUTH. 481
rivalry, jealousy and traditional ani-mosity.
Most of them are heavily
taxed to support vast armies and to pay
the interest upon tremendous national
debts. They are handicapped by an-cient
laws, customs and social tradi-tions.
But they continue to grow in
wealth and population. The condi-tion
of their people is steadily rising,
and life with them undoubtedly be-comes
easier instead of harder.
It is inevitable that the South must
increase in population and grow in
wealth from this time forward as it
never grew before. He who questions
this must deny that the hand which
smote the shackles from the limbs of
the slave set free the soul of the mas-ter.
He must show that there are
natural causes which place the South
at a disadvantage as compared with
the Northern States and with all the
countries of Europe, or he must prove
that Southern men are inferior to their
American and European contempor-aries
in the nobler attributes of man-hood.
The facts and figures which have
been cited in this paper leave no room
to question the substantial progress
of the South in the development and
diversification of- its industries under
difficult and trying circumstances.
Remembering the difficulties which
the South has overcome, and the suf-ferings
it has survived, the outlook to-day
is altogether hopeful. The State
governments are in the hands of
Southern men. The South has an
equal voice with the North and the
West in the councils of the nation, and
upon it rests an equal responsibility
and interest in shaping the destiny of
the Union. Its people possess as fair
a land as was ever blessed with the
benediction of heaven, imperial in
domain, unlimited in mineral wealth
and unsurpassed in natural advan-tages.
Its young men, reared in the
stern school of adversity, have been
hardened and strengthened in the
sturdy virtues of their race and blood.
Year by year they grow in knowledge
of the opportunities to which they
were born and in faith in the future.
THE SOUTHERN STATES.
THE
Southern States.
AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY MAGAZINb.
DEVOTED TO THE SOUTH.
Published by the
Manufacturers' Record Publishing Co.
Manutacturers' Record Building,
BALTIMORE, MD.
SUBSCRIPTION, ... $1.50 a Year.
WILLIAM H. EDMONDS,
Editor and Manager.
BALTIMORE, JANUARY, 1897.
The SOUTHERN STATES is an exponent of the
immigration and Real Estate Interests and
general advancement of the South, and a journal
of accurate and comprehensive information
about Southern resources and progress.
Its purpose is to set forth accurately and
conservatively from month to month the reasons
why the South is, for the farmer, the settler, the
home seeker, the investor, incomparably the
most attractive section of this country.
Honor to Whom Honor is Due.
The Houston Post recently published the
following:
"That man used to be regarded as a valu-able
citizen and a public benefactor who
made two blades of grass grow where but
one grew before. Under such a measure
of public utility ex-Governor W. J. Nor-then,
of Georgia, is entitled to the distinc-tion
of being today the most useful citizen
in Georgia, for he is causing more new acres
to be cultivated in that State than is caused
by any other man there.
"The town of Fitzgerald, containing now
some 8000 population, is the result of ex-
Governor Northen's enterprise, and the terri-tory
around Fitzgerald is being rapidly filled
with a hardy and progressive class of immi-grants
from the North and Northwest. The
Savannah News says 150 families are ready
to start for Georgia from the country about
Duluth, Minn., and that this is only the
'advance guard of a host of immigrants' ex-pected
before the spring. One man has
thus been the instrumentality of starting an
immigration into Georgia that will be worth
millions of money to that State. But the
good does not stop there, for the tide started
in the Northwest is running strongly to-ward
Alabama and Florida as well as Geor-gia.
Twenty wagon loads of newcomers
from Wisconsin located the other day near
Huntsville, Ala. Incidents like this are
mentioned almost daily in the Post's South-ern
exchanges."
This was reproduced in the Atlanta Jour-nal,
with this comment:
"This is high praise, indeed, but it does
not go beyond the deserts of Governor
Northen."
In the interest of truth, and in justice to
many able and successful immigration
workers in the South, the "Southern States"
feels constrained to point out some inaccu-racies
in the foregoing article. We have no
desire in the world to detract from the work
that ex-Governor Northen has done. He
has accomplished large results, and not only
the State of Georgia, but the whole South,
will be benefited by his immigration and
colonization undertakings. But it is not a
fact, as would be inferred from the article
we have quoted, that the tide of immigra-tion
now "running strongly toward Ala-bama
and -Florida, as well as Georgia." is
an outcome of the Fitzgerald colony, or of
any work ex-Governor Northen has done,
or that the flow of immigration into Geor-gia
was started through this instrumen-tality.
This "tide" was "running strongly
towards Alabama and Florida, as well as
Georgia" and other Southern States, long-before
ex-Governor Northen entered upon
his immigration work. For several years
before he had undertaken such an enter-prise,
]\Iajor W. L. Glessner, as commis-sioner
of immigration of the Georgia
482
EDITORIAL. 483
Southern & Florida, under the progressive
management of Mr. W. L. Sparks, had been
engaged in vigorous, aggressive and suc-cessful
immigration effort, and hundreds of
thrifty and industrious families from the
North were settled upon thousands of acres
in what had been largely an undeveloped
wilderness.
The 150 families referred to as starting
from Duluth for Georgia were specifically
stated in the dispatches to be part of a
colon}^ to be settled at Sibley, Ga. This is
a station on the Georgia Southern & Flor-ida
Railroad. The formation of this colony
is a result of Major Glessner's work, and
had no relation whatever to the Fitzgerald
colony, or to the work of its projectors.
In other Southern States the flow of im-migration
was well advanced, and was in-creasing
rapidly in volume before ex-Gov-ernor
Northen had even entered upon his
term of office as governor, which preceded
the initiation of his immigration undertak-ings.
Through the efforts of Mr. E. E.
Posey, general passenger agent of the Mo-bile
& Ohio, and Mr. Henry Fonde, of Mo-bile,
president of the Alabama Land Co.,
many hundreds of Northern families had
been settled in Alabama and Mississippi
along the line of the Mobile & Ohio. The
Illinois Central road, through E. P. Skene,
land commissioner; J. F. Merry, passenger
agent, and other officials, had populated with
Northern farmers vast areas of unoccupied
lands and built up thriving towns and com-munities
in jNIississippi and Louisiana, made
up wholly of Northern settlers. W. W.
Duson & Bro., of Crowley, La., had been
instrumental in procuring the settlement in
Southwest Louisiana of hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of immigrants from Iowa, Min-nesota,
Michigan, Wisconsin and other
Western and Northwestern States. Col. J.
B. Killebrew, immigration commissioner of
the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis
Railway, had been conspicuously successful
in bringing about the settlement of North-ern
farmers in Tennessee and Northern
Alabama. The State of Arkansas had re-ceived
many thousands of agricultural im-migrants
through the work of the State land
commissioner, Hon. W. G. Vincenheller
and the railroads that traverse the State,
notably the St. Louis Southwestern, the St.
Louis & Iron ^Mountain and the Missouri
Pacific.
And besides these particularly notable
examples, we might name dozens of minor
instrumentalities that had been doing effec-tive
immigration work in Georgia and all
the Southern States long before ex-Gov-ernor
Northen's agency had any existence.
We repeat that we have no purpose to be-little
the great work the ex-Governor of
Georgia is doing. On the contrary, we
should contradict any statement unfair to
him as readily as we have sought in this
instance to correct an unfair impression as
to those who were in advance of him in suc-cessful
immigration work, and who, along
with him, are peopling the untilled acres of
the South with thrifty and successful farm-ers
from the North. What they are accom-plishing
in this direction is not at all a re-sult
of anything he has done; rather might
it be said that the pioneer work they have
been doing has made easier the accomplish-ment
of what he has been able to do. We
are quite sure that none will be more ready
to acknowledge the justice of all we have
said than ex-Governor Northen himself.
Real Estate the Best Investment.
We publish elsewhere an interesting and
significant article from the London Agricul-tural
Gazette. The belief of the English
"millionaire financier" that land is a far
safer investment than shares in companies
at the mercy of directors and subject to ac-cidents
of good or bad trade has striking
enforcement in a recent utterance of an
American millionaire financier. This gen-tleman,
a resident of Baltimore, for many
EDITORIAL.
years a large investor in railroad and other
securities, at one time associated with the
active management of one of the largest
railroad systems in the country, and owner
of stocks and bonds to the value of many
hundreds of thousands of dollars, said not
long ago that in future he would buy no
stocks of any sort, but would make all his
investments in real estate.
And where else on the globe can there be
found such opportunities for real-estate in-vestment
as in the Southern States? With
its supreme advantages for manufacturing,
for agriculture, for health, and its wealth in
all that goes to make life worth living, and
with its rapid increase in factories and in
agricultural population, it is safe to say that
its farm, timber and mineral lands will never
in the future sell for prices as low as they
may be bought for now. This is particu-larly
true of large undeveloped areas, which
may be bought now at almost nominal
prices, but which, with continued railroad
expansion, will bring fortunes to those who
may be fortunate enough and far-seeing
enough to capture them now.
Benefits of Agricultural Immigration.
Unquestionably the greatest need of the
South today is immigration—thrifty, indus-trious
agriculturists. The benefits of such
im_migration are difficult to enumerate, so
thoroughly do they permeate the well-being
of the entire community and section. When
it is pointed out that increased population
means greater wealth, and a consequent de-crease
in the individual burden of taxation,
an important benefit is stated, and one
which of itself is sufficient incentive to the
South to work for desirable immigration;
but that is merely one of many almost
equally important. Who can calculate the
benefits that would come to the whole na-tion
if the present population of the South
were doubled, were augmented by thrifty
agriculturists to the number of the people
now in the South? And yet the popula-tion
of the South would not then be nearly
so dense as that of Massachusetts—would
still lack some 200 persons to the square
mile of being so thickly populated as is the
not conspicuously fertile Bay State. That
the South, with its unparalleled variety of
soil, climate and resources, could easily
support a population ten times its present
density no well-informed man is likely to
question; so that it should be a matter of
comparatively easy achievement to secure
double the present population.
More people would mean more and bet-ter
schools, more good roads and every
other comfort and convenience of modern
civilization. It would mean more develop-ment
of the unmeasured resources of the
South, a reduction in the cost of many of
the articles necessary to life and to com-merce,
and by enriching the South would
add to the riches and prosperity of the na-tion.
Much less than double the present
population, if they were of the right sort,
would mean an increase in the value of
Southern property amounting to at least
double the present valuation. It would
mean more and larger cities, more and
greater manufacturing centres and more
importance in the industrial and commer-cial
world.
The incentive is so strong, the benefits so
well-nigh illimitable, that it would seem the
v.'hole South, as if one man, would make it
the particular and unceasing business of
life to seek to fill up the waste places, to
tenant the tenantless farm lands, and to
thus bring an era of prosperity greater than
that ever heretofore enjoyed by any nation
of the earth.
General Notes.
A Northern Capitalist Revises His Opin=
ions of the South After Investigation.
Mr. J. K. Ridgely, passenger agent of the
Louisville & Nashville Railroad at Chi-cago,
recently induced Mr. Davitt D. Chid-ester,
a capitalist of New Waterford, Ohio,
to go South on a trip of investigation. After
he had gotten back he wrote to Mr. Ridgely
about his trip, and his letter is given below.
It is valuable testimony, because of the fact
that the writer of it is a man of means and
influence and is a large owner of farm lands
in the West:
"New Waterford, Ohio, Nov. 30, 1896.
"J. K. Ridgely, Passenger Agent
L. & N. R. R., Chicago, 111.:
"My Dear Sii'—In accordance with my
promise, I write you briefly my impressions
of the South.
"I was much pleased with what I saw in
the section of the South visited, and confess
to have been greatly surprised and agree-ably
so by the wealth of resources it seems
to have in the way of soil, climate, minerals,
timber, etc. It impressed me as being a
vast but undeveloped empire, needing only
Northern thrift and energy to promote it
into the most productive and the wealthiest
section of the whole country.
"I confess also to have gone there with a
great deal of prejudice. I think that, in
common with most Northern men, I had the
idea that the 'South' was a land of dark and
dismal forests of cypress and malarious rice
swamps and canebrakes; a land of torrid
summers and malarial wet seasons.
"On the contrary, so far as I could learn
by careful investigation and inquiry of both
the natives and of Northern men who have
been living in the South for years, I find the
climate of that part of Alabama, Mississippi
and Georgia which I visited to be exceed-ingly
healthful, in fact unsurpassed by any
part of the North. While their summers
are long, they are never so hot as we have
them in the North, nor are they subject to
the sudden changes in temperature which
we have in the North.
"I think it is only a question of making
the great advantages of this section of the
United States known to the Northern peo-ple
to have a great tide of immigration set
in, for certainly it has every advantage over
the Northwest in every way. The farmer
there does not have to work eighteen hours
a day during the summer in order to get
enough to keep himself in food and cloth-ing
and to keep warm and to feed his stock
during the winter, as they do in the West-ern
and Northwestern States. He can live
twice as well with half the work, if all I
heard and saw is true. He runs no risk of
droughts or of blizzards, which are practi-cally
unknown in the South. When I am
again in your city I may call and talk with
you personally about the South. Mean-while,
I am, yours very truly,
"DAVITT D. CHIDESTER.*'
From Ohio to Georgia.
Mr. G. W. Shults, recently of Ohio, writes
to the "Southern States'" from Glenmore,
Ga.
:
"We left Columbus, Ohio, a few days ago
in bitter cold weather. Arriving here, we
found the weather perfectly delightful. The
gardens are about as they are in Ohio in
May and June. Strawberries are in bloom,
new potatoes about the size of walnuts. I
cannot understand why so many people will
stay in the North and freeze to death and
raise, or attempt to raise, but one crop a
year, when down in this country they can
have some crop maturing every month in
the year and realize a better price, with
much less labor."
The rapid rise of the pineapple industry
in Florida since the freeze is shown by a
report of Capt. W. J. Jarvis, general freight
agent of the Florida East Coast Railway, as
to the number of crates of pineapples hauled
485
486 GENERAL NOTES.
over his road in the last three seasons. In
1894 there were 35,931 crates; in 1895, as a
result of the freeze, the number was re-duced
to 4127 crates, but in 1896 the ship-ments
reached 43,012 crates.
The Georgia & Alabama.
At the annual meeting of the Georgia &
Alabama Railway Co., held December 16 at
Americus, Ga., the following gentlemen
were elected directors: John Skelton Wil-liams,
of Richmond; J. Willcox Brown, J.
W. Middendorf and R. B. Sperry, of Balti-more;
W. F. Cochran, Ernest Thallman
and C. Sydney Shepard, of New York; John
D. Stetson, of Macon; S. A. Carter, of Co-lumbus;
W. W. Williamson, John Flan-nery,
C. D. Baldwin and W. W. McKall, of
Savannah; Cecil Gabbett and J. W.
Sheffield, of Americus.
The new board of directors immediately
organized and elected the following officers:
John Skelton Williams, president; Cecil
Gabbett, first vice-president and general
manager; John W. Middendorf, second
vice-president; J. Willcox Brown, treas-urer;
W. W. McKall, secretary.
The Columbus Southern Railroad was
recently bought for the Georgia & Ala-bama
and will be operated as a part of that
system after January i.
A New Yorker Buys a Fine Farm in
Virginia.
Mr. A. L. Washburne, of New York, has
bought, through the Southern Farm
Agency, of Ljmchburg, Va., the fine estate
known as "Homewood," on Hog Island in
the James river. It contains 3200 acres of
land, with fine buildings and extensive farm-ing
equipment. The price paid is said to
have been $180,000.
It is said that the purchaser will further
improve the estate, and will bring down to
it from New York specialists in gardening,
dairying, butter-making, horticulture and
general farming.
South Georgia's Winter Products.
Here the seasons are all blended into
each other, and butterflies and bees sip
honey from the flowers which never fade
from frost and cold. During last week snap
beans, radishes and other vegetables of the
kind were served from gardens here on the
dinner tables of our citizens. Yesterday
the Times had an invitation to a watermelon
cutting which is to take place at a country
home near Valdosta on Christmas day. All
over this section there is room for frugal
citizens, and in no section of the country
are there brighter prospects for the future
or better surroundings for the present.
Come South, young man, if you really want
to see the garden spot of the world.—Val-dosta,
Ga., Times.
Artesian Water in the South.
The city of Augusta, Ga., is discussing
plans for increasing its water supply. A
writer in the Chronicle advocates the boring
of artesian wells, and in support of his sug-gestion
he writes as follows about the im-proved
healthfulness of communities that
have adopted artesian w.ater:
"I have this much to say for the artesian
wells, it has been proven to be the
healthiest and largest and most inexhaust-ible
supply of fresh water that a city like
Augusta or Memphis, or Thomasville or
Savannah and innumerable small places can
obtain.
"Look what it has done for the lower
counties, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee.
Why, in certain sections of these States it
used to be impossible for a white man to
live in them on account of the malaria.
Now, these wells, giving health, life and
vigor wherever the water is used, liave
caused the waste places to be populated with
a people whose energy equals those of our
Northern States, and, in fact, hundreds of
these people have moved down in Florida
and around Thomasville, Ga., and make it
their homes the year round, and land that
could have been bought for a song a few
years ago cannot now be had at twice the
price.
"Take our own suburbs and outskirts,
the Hickman and Phinizy farms. White
men who would dare spend the nights
on these farms a few years back during the
warm months simply took their lives in their
own hands. Now since they have gotten
artesian water they live there the whole
year round with their children, and malarial
fevers are almost a stranger to them.
"From Savannah to Tennille, on the Cen-tral
Railroad, malaria used to be so thick
and deadlv that there was little or no white
GENERAL NOTES. 487
population. Now look at the population of
the towns and the fame of their w^ells.
Water is being hauled from Alillen everj^
day for drinking purposes in Augusta. So
much might be said for the health-giving
qualities of this water that it would weary
the reader and I will desist. I only ask the
people to consider for a moment the inesti-mable
good it would do us to be supplied
with this water.'"
Another Georgia Colony.
A co-operative colony has been started in
Muscogee county, Georgia, near Colum-bus.
The colony is said to number be-tvv-
een 300 and 400 members, and about fifty
have already settled on the colony prop-crt}'.
The colony calls itself "The Chris-tian
Commonwealth," and the town to be
started as a centre will be named Common-wealth.
The Central of Georgia Railway
has established a station for the colony
with that name.
The managers are Rev. Ralph Albert-son,
a Congregational minister, and Mr.
W. C. Damon. The leaders in the move-ment
are George Howard Gibson, Lincoln,
Neb., and John Chipman. Tallahassee.
Fla. Mr'. Chipman writes the "Southern
States'" as follows in regard to the enter-prise:
" 'The Christian Commonwealth' has
purchased about 1000 acres of land at Wim-berly
Station, on the Georgia Central Rail-road,
about ten miles northeast of Colum-bus,
Ga., and near Midland, their present
postoffice, on the Southern Railroad be-tween
Atlanta and Columbus. They have
on the grovind between forty and fifty colo-nists,
and more are constantly arriving.
They expect to erect saw mill, planer and
woodworking machinery very soon, and a
canning factorj^ in the spring for the sum-mer's
work, and such other machinery as
they can make use of—grist mill, gin, etc.
"Their plan is to be self-sustaining and
mutually helpful. They hold their prop-erty
in common, and are strictly co-ope-rative.
"They are a religious society, but are not
a 'new church.' Members from every de-nomination
are welcomed, and are not re-quired
to sever themselves from their com-munion.
But the basis of the 'Christian
Commonwealth' is mutual helpfulness and
work, consecrated to the redemption of the
workers of the world from industrial
slavery.'"
Cuban Tobacco in Florida.
A correspondent at Fort Meade, Fla.,
sends the "Southern States" the following
interesting account of the successful at-tempt
to grow the best Cuban tobacco in
that locality:
"Fort Meade is situated in Polk county,
Florida, about half-way down the penin-sula
and almost equidistant between the
Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic ocean. It
is a small town of 500 inhabitants on the
Plant System of railroads, and was for-merly
a post of some importance to the
United States forces engaged in the war
with the Seminole Indians. Peace creek
runs through the town, and it was on the
banks of this stream that General Meade,
from whom the place takes it name, signed
the treaty of peace that ended the desultory
war that had been carried on with the Semi-noles
for some years. Later it became a
large oi^ange and phosphate-shipping and
cattle-trading centre, but the freeze of two
years ago, added to the prevalent hard times
of the last three years, deprived it of much
oi its prosperity. The present rebellion in
Cuba has driven from its shores the men
who have been the mainstay of that Island,
the tobacco-growers of the far-famed
Yuelta-Abajo district of Cuba. These men,
cut off from their homes, plantations and
the industry in which they have been en-gaged
for years, and in the evening of their
lives forced to emigrate to a foreign coun-try,
and left nearly penniless, naturally turn
their thoughts and energies towards