Southern States.

              THE
Southern States.
AUGUST, 1894.
THE FRUIT INDUSTRY OF PIEDMONT VIRGINIA.
By James Blakey.
The Piedmont section—one of the
great divisions of the State of Virginia
—
is very properly termed the "fruit belt"
of the State. It has been aptly de-scribed
as the "fifth step" of the great
stairway ascending from the coast to the
west, extending from the Potomac to the
North Carolina line, about 250 miles in
length, with an average width of about
twenty-five miles along the base of the
Blue Ridge. These mountains rise from
2000 to 4000 feet above the level of the
sea, while the lands west of the coast
ranges are generally from 300 to 500
feet above the sea ; they rise to the
west until at the foot of the Blue Ridge
the altitude of 12,000 feet is frequently
attained. This Piedmont section is one
in which the mountains present them-selves
in their grand as well as their
diminutive forms, gradually sinking into
the smaller foot-hills and plains, giving
great diversity and picturesqueness to
the landscape. The soil is usually
fertile.
The fruits best adapted to the soil and
climate of the sunny eastern slopes and
base of the Blue Ridge mountains,
which are sheltered from the cold North-ern
and Northwestern winds, are the
apple, grape, peach, pear, cherry, plum,
strawberry and raspberry. These are
most profitable to the cultivator, and so
easy of cultivation that every farmer
should have a choice selection of them.
The Southwestern Mountains of Pied-mont
are also noted for their fine fruits.
These mountains form a range parallel
to the Blue Ridge and are separated by
a distance, varying from fifteen to thirty
miles, while the mountain slopes are
very fine for the cultivation of fruits ;
any common field or pasture which pro-duces
good crops may be chosen for an
orchard for most varieties.
The peculiar light soil on the Blue
Ridge and the outlying hills, kept con-stantly
fertile by the decomposition of
rocks furnishing potash and perennially
moist by numerous springs, yet thor-oughly
drained of stagnant moisture by
the rock debris, furnishes conditions un-surpassed
for the successful cultivation
of the apple.
The world-renowned Albemarle pip-pin,
however, which grows in this region
only, thrives best, and only arrives at its
full perfection on the mountain sides.
It requires the rich soil found in the
mountain hollows and caves and a good
elevation to come to perfection. This
apple has and deserves a reputation sur-passing
that of any other grown. It is
especially a favorite in England, and in
competition with the apples of the world
on the London and Liverpool markets
it brings the highest price. At the time
England imposed a tariff on apples the
Albemarle pippin, by special act of Par-liament,
was admitted free of duty, on
account of its superior excellence. The
pippin crops are generally bought up
in the orchards by shippers, unless
exported by the owners. In 1887, for
instance, these pippins sold on the trees
for $4.50 per barrel, the buyer furnishing
the barrel and gathering and packing.
The average price, in the orchards, paid
>9Q THE FRUIT INDUSTRY OF PIEDMONT VIRGINIA.
by speculators has been from $2:50 to
$3.00, some years ranging higher. Some
of the larger raisers ship their crops to
Liverpool, while others sell to dealers
and speculators. The latter generally
ship to England. That country is the
best market, and nearly all of the clear
pippins are sent thither. For this rea-son
and because it is grown within so
limited an area and the aggregate crop
is therefore small, this splendid apple is
not popularly known throughout the
country. It is rarely found in American
markets, and never any but fruit of sec-ond
grade. To obtain the best and
genuine fruit contracts must be made
early, and a good price paid to reliable
parties. The average price in Liver-pool
is $6 00 per barrel, the prices
ranging from $4.00 to $10.00, varying
with the supply and quality. Whilst
an abundant supply of other apples
will to some extent affect the price and
demand for pippins, yet, when the
general apple crop is very large, genuine
Albemarle pippins bring fine prices
;
for example in 1888 when there was
perhaps the largest apple crop ever
grown in the United States and Canada,
they netted upwards of $4.00 per barrel,
so that a crop of really good pippins
can be relied upon to bring $4.00 per
barrel net any year if sold in the English
markets. The full years of this fruit
usually hit on the off years of the North
and West. The cost of transportation
from Albemarle county, .Va., to Liver-pool
is from $1.16 to $1.60 per barrel,
according to the point of shipment, etc.
This fruit is slow in reaching maturity,
requiring some twelve or fifteen years
from time of planting to bear a paying
crop. During these years of waiting
peaches or dwarf pears may be planted
between the pippin trees, and profitable
crops can be gathered almost from the
beginning. These lands are well adapted
to both of these fruits. Of course they
should be cleared out as the pippin
trees begin bearing or advance suffi-ciently
in age to require it. Another
mode which has been adopted with
success is the grafting of the pippin
upon other stock. In this case the
yield comes in about three years. While
the fruit is of good quality the longevity
is not the same as that of the genuine
pippin tree. The first is the plan which
has usually been adopted.
The writer knows of an owner of an
orchard who refused $5000 for one
year's pippin crop, and of a number of
others who realize on bearing years
several thousand dollars clear money
and yet have left many barrels of seconds.
The Albemarle pippin can be pro-duced
also in the counties of Greene,
Madison, Campbell, Bedford and Rap-pahannock,
but practically its growing
is limited to the two counties of Albe-marle
and Nelson. In these two coun-ties
in bearing years the crop aggregates
about 40,000 barrels, which at the low
average of $4.00 per barrel yields an
income to the counties of $160,000.
The area adapted to this splendid fruit
is limited, and gives to the owners of
pippin-bearing lands a monopoly. There
is no danger of the supply exceeding
the demand, because this fruit will only
come to perfection within certain limits.
There is yet a good deal of this mount-ain
pippin land that can be bought at
very low prices. It should be stated,
however, that the pippin does not thrive
well above the line of perennial
springs.
While the limit described exists as to
the Albemarle pippin, yet the Winesaps,
Johnson's fine winter or York Imperial,
Bell Flower, Fall Cheese, Pilot, Milans,
Ben Davis and other varieties flourish
and grow to perfection throughout this
section. There are many fine orchards
on rocky tracts and places impracticable
for successful tillage and along lanes.
These places produce thrifty trees and
fruit of the very best quality, the rich,
light, friable soil, requiring but little
cultivation. Spots, which otherwise
would be valueless, can then be made
with little labor and expense the most
productive parts of the farm. Lands
which can be utilized to advantage only
for sheep pasturage, and which can be
bought for from $3.00 to $7.00 per acre
can soon be made to grow good
orchards. Some of the finest Winesaps
I have seen were grown on red land
which had been so reduced in surface
fertility that the orchard was destitute of
grass, the roots penetrated into the virgin
THE FRUIT INDUSTRY OF PIEDMONT VIRGINIA. 291
subsoil, which the skim plowing for
years had not touched.
After the Albemarle pippin, probably
the best apple to grow here for market
is the Winesaps. It will flourish in any
moderately fertile soil. It is a vigorous,
thrifty grower, an early bearer and bears
more freely in off years than the pippin.
The price is much less, however, than
that of the pippin. It usually brings in
the ordinary market from $1.00 to $1.50,
though picked fruit of this variety, after
the winter is well on, fetches $2.50 per
barrel. It bears transportation well.
The Johnson's fine winter or York
Imperial (it is known here by both
names) and the Ben Davis are compara-tively
new in this section, but are very
popular in the Western markets, where
they command better prices than the
Winesaps. Both of these varieties are
vigorous growers and will do well in
any of the soils of Piedmont Virginia
and yield abundantly at a very early age.
The Bell Flower and Fall Cheese are
fall apples and usually find a ready sale
at good prices, especially if there is a
failure in the Northern apple crop, as
was the case in 1893, when they sold at
from $5.00 to $6.00 per barrel.
For the red apple there is not such a
great foreign demand as for the pippin.
Those of Canadian growth seem to be
preferred in England. The prices for
the red apple are always such, even
when the crop is very abundant, as to
make the business of growing them very
profitable. It generally happens that the
bearing years in Piedmont Virginia
coincide with the off years in New York
and the other apple-producing States
North, and hence good prices can gen-erally
be had.
Some years ago, Mr. William Hotopp,
a German settler in Albemarle county,
being struck with the favorable condi-tions
this section offered for grape
growing, planted a vineyard with the
idea of furnishing the Northern markets
with table grapes. As it was an experi-ment,
some of the varieties tried had to
be abandoned, yet his venture was so
successful that gradually others, finding
that he succeeded so well, followed his
example. Soon he began the experi-ment
of wine making also. This, too,
proved a success. Each year the aver-age
acreage increased, until some 3000
acres in Albemarle were covered with
the vine. Certain varieties were dis-carded,
others were limited to the higher
elevations where they thrive best, and
yet other varieties were tried until
many of the best varieties suited to the
soil and climate were ascertained.
Save in the pruning, no more skill is
required in the cultivation of the grape
than of corn. The art of pruning is
not difficult to learn, and may readily
be obtained from those of experience
in viticulture resident in this section.
Neither are the modes and processes of
making wines now hidden or occult
secrets in Albemarle. Experience, a
safe but rather an expensive teacher,
has cured the fallacies and mistakes
of judgment which misled the beginners.
Some of these have seen their antici-
.
pated profits on certain varieties dwindle
to nothing with loss of capital and inter-est.
Those who now enter upon grape
culture in Albemarle may know, by the
mere asking, the leading varieties of
table or wine grapes which are most
certain and profitable, and thus travel
upon a sure and beaten road, if they
do not desire to experiment with new
and untried varieties.
A pecularity noted in the most favored
claret-producing vineyards of France is
the large admixture of iron in the soil.
This is characteristic of much of the
soil of this section. The soil and climate,
when compared with the grape districts
of Germany and France, present many
striking similarities. In fact the climatic
conditions are about the same and the
conditions primarily essential for suc-cessful
grape culture in perfection are
here combined, especially in Albemarle
county. The average ranges of the
thermometer of this section between
Lynchburg and Alexandria and of those
registered at Bordeaux and other vine-growing
sections of Germany and
France are very close together. There
is a little more rainfall here, but the
effects thereof are counteracted by more
sunshine attended by consequent
quicker evaporation. In this rolling,
hilly country, with its calcareous loam,
or gravelly, loose soil, with a rocky
2Q2 THE FRUIT INDUSTRY OF PIEDMONT VIRGINIA.
subsoil, facilitating self drainage, with
exemption from heavy spring frosts and
early frosts in autumn, with rarely any
excess of rainfall in the maturing months
of June, July, August and September,
are the most favored conditions for -the
vine. This is shown, as would be sup-posed,
by the luxuriant growth and fine
quality of the native uncultivated grape.
Yet, since as Virgil says, "the grape
abhors the wet," the hillsides are to be
preferred.
The London Company in Virginia, in
1630, William Penn in his State, in
1633, a Swiss Geneva colony in Ken-tucky,
in 1790, made unsuccessful
attempts to cultivate the foreign grapes.
Mr. Jefferson made a similar failure. It
was not until the forties that Nicholas
Longworth, of Ohio, conceived the
idea that the native stock must be taken
as a basis. Since then, experimenting
has progressed upon this line until,
through the hybrids and seedlings of
American stock, between 300 and 400
native varieties have been produced.
In California the plan abandoned in the
East was adopted, and the vitis vinifera
of Europe planted. Hence the phyl-loxera
pest, the pourridie—a root rot
—
and the couleur, or common blight, have
about destroyed the vineyards of the So-noma
valley, and have made fearful rava-ges
in the Napa valley. The phylloxera
louse abounds with our native grapes, con-sequently
those now in existeuce are the
varieties whose constitution was strong
enough to withstand its ravages. While
the vines here are not troubled with the
phylloxera which destroyed millions of
acres of European vineyards, until the
great wine country of France imported
wine for her own use, yet the mildew
and black rot, which also exist in Cali-fornia,
for a while interfered with the
grape industry of Albemarle and adja-cent
counties. These two fungi are now
successfully treated by successive spray-ings
with the Bordeaux mixture, the
active properties of which are dissolved
bluestone and lime, and the Fan de
Celeste, which is dissolved bluestone
with the addition of liquid ammonia.
Neither of these mixtures, nor their
application, are very expensive. They
pay well for their use.
The great varieties of our native der
veloped stock are not all suited to the
same or any one section. This but cor-roborates
European experience, where
the removal of a given variety to a dif-ferent
section results either in a total
failure or in such modifications in the
properties of the grape as to make it
practically a different fruit.
The maturity of the table grape
begins generally about the first week in
August, an opportune time to realize good
prices in the markets. Those for wine
purposes are gathered throughout Sep-tember
and until as late as about the
10th of October.
The following statement furnished the
writer by one of the most accurate, con-scientious
and reliable viticulturists in
the State, will give a practical view of
this branch of the subject. I give this
one from a number very similar to it.
He says : "I got my first crop from two
and a-ha'lf acres. The yield was $35.61
per acre. The yield this year was very
poor, owing to the vines having been
planted in the wheat and having
made a poor growth the first bear-ing
year for lack of work, besides a
great many of the vines died, so that
less than two-thirds were in bearing,
the replanted ones not being old enough.
1st 1searing year, 2% acres yie ded. .$ 35.61 per
2d " "3 • 90.75
3d " 4 ' .. 113.00
4th " 1% "
• • 23.27
5th " 9*4
"
. . 56.26
6th " " 11 " ' .. 108.5S
7th " 17
"
.. 116.28
Sth " 22^ "
.. 101.56
9th " 28 "
•• 51-74
10th " 30 • • 54-97
"The small yield in the fifth bearing
year was due to a severe hail storm,
which nearly destroyed the crop and
left the wood so cut up that the next
year's crop was also shortened.
"This is the yield from fruit sold
altogether for wine, with the exception
of $50 worth of plants sold one year.
In addition to the above yields I made
about $1000 worth of plants, which I
did not sell, but which enabled me to
put out my vineyard at much less
expense.
"My vineyard is on land that I put at
about $25 per acre before I planted my
vineyard. I estimate it has cost me
about $75 per acre to plant an acre (I
THE FRUIT INDUSTRY OF PIEDMONT VIRGINIA. 293
raising most of my plants) and to trellis
it and bring it into bearing. Thus I put
my outlay of capital at $100 per acre.
The above yields make an average yield
per acre of $72.54. Deduct from this
$15 per acre, which I think is sufficient
to cover expense of making a crop on
an acre, including bone and ashes that I
have used, there is thus left $57.54
average net profit per acre, or 57^2 per
cent, on the capital invested."
This is the practical experience of a
painstaking farmer for a period of ten
years, during which time one crop was
destroyed by hail, which caused a short-age
also the succeeding year, and in two
other seasons the crops suffered severely
from mildew and black rot, for both of
which fungi there is now a known spe-cific
in the bluestone solutions.
I will cite the experience of another
gentleman, who has for several years
rented a vineyard already in bearing,
paying one-half of the proceeds from
the sale of the crop, after deducting cost
of cultivation, the landlord furnishing
the teams. This gentleman sold his
crop last year for $2800. He expended
in fertilizers and cultivation about $800,
so landlord and tenant received $1000
each profit.
It will be observed that the land in
the foregoing statement was put at $25
per acre. This was because of its loca-tion
and agricultural value. Land upon
which equally good results can be ob-tained
can be bought for less. It will
also be noticed that he raised and sold
the wine grapes. Many are of the
opinion that there is more profit in a
vineyard of both table and wine grapes.
The table grapes are shipped to the
Northern markets, and are sold at good
prices, and those left after the markets
become glutted can be sold to the wine
cellars in this section at a good profit.
I interviewed many of the wine
growers in this section several years
ago, and their statements then showed a
profit of $50 to $90 after the third year
from planting.
In 1878 the enterprising manager of
a wine company in Albemarle county,
knowing the superior quality of the
wines of his cellar, placed twelve bottles
of his four kinds of red wines on
exhibition at the International Expo-sition
at Paris, France. Other sections
of the United States were represented
there by pyramids of artistically exhib-ited
wines, yet the final result was that
seven medals were awarded to the still
wines of this county. Of these the
Monticello Wine Co., of Charlottesville,
Va., was the only one awarded a silver
medal, the others being bronze, not one of
which was obtained by California. The
reputation thus acquired for Albemarle
wines in competition with the wines ot
Europe and the world soon increased the
use of them to such an extent that it
has been difficult to supply the demand
and retain the wines until they have
attained sufficient age. Since then this
company has received two first-class
medals at the World's Exposition at
New Orleans, in 1884, and at the Phila-delphia
Centennial Exposition, 1876, it
received prizes. In 1889 it obtained
a silver medal and diploma at the
Exposition Universelle at Paris, and Mr.
Adolph Russow, a German resident of
Albemarle, and now manager and
superintendent of this company,
received a diploma and a bronze medal
for his new Norton wine, and at the
Columbian Exposition at Chicago the
same company received two first-class
awards. In addition, the wines of
Albemarle have obtained numerous
awards by State and local fairs, given
in open competition. The products of
the cellars of Albemarle are the pure
fermented grape juice, and are of the
highest excellence, being clear, pure
wines, and if allowed to acquire the
"bouquet" that age alone can give, they
stand, successfully, comparison with
some of the noted wines of Europe.
Much of the wine sold from these
cellars is resold at a heavy advance by
purchasers of it in Northern and West-ern
cities, who realize at "imported
prices."
The winemakers here pay from $70
to $80 per ton for grapes, while the
grape grower of California has to part
with his grapes at from $8.00 to $15.00
per ton, while his land costs him a great
deal more, wages are higher and he has
to contend with diseases which have not
attacked the vines of Virginia.
294 THE FRUIT INDUSTRY OF PIEDMONT VIRGINIA.
The opportunities for profitable peach
culture in Piedmont Virginia are very
great, and there are many localities on
the breezy foot hills of the mountains
where the crop would be always exempt
from danger from late frosts, when the
crops in tidewater Virginia and other sec-tions
are entirely cut oft". The soil, like
that of the Delaware Peninsula, from
Cape Charles on the south to the Dela-ware
and Chesapeake canal on the north,
is so peculiarly conducive to the pro-duction
of the peach that it is difficult
to make a mistake in the soil ; only the
low lands should be avoided. Prof. F.
W. Massey, who is not only a well
educated and scientific pomologist, but
one who has had some years of practical
experience in fruit culture, says :
''An intimate acquaintance with, and
practical experience in peach culture in
the peach-growing section of Maryland,
leads me to say that in my opinion the
plateau at the foot of the Blue Ridge in
Albemarle ought to be the site of the most
profitable peach orchards. Those who
are growing peaches in this section are
doing well. Albemarle peaches go into
the markets two to four weeks ahead of
the great Maryland and Delaware
orchards and they reach the Northern
markets at a time when there is little
competition. The present season ( 18S8)
with the prospects of an enormous crop
in Maryland and Delaware, Albemarle
peaches, up to July, brought an average
of $6.00 per bushel. With an experi-ence
of thirty years in peach cultivation
I had rather take my chances for profit-able
culture with this fruit in this locality
than in , any other with which I am
acquainted. And yet these lands can
be bought for one -fourth of the peach
lands of Maryland and Delaware. An
experience of many years in the best
fruit-growing section of Maryland ena-bles
me to fairly compare the prospects
of profitable fruit-growing in Albemarle
with that magnificent fruit garden, the
Chesapeake and Delaware Peninsula,
and I am satisfied, that for profitable
market culture, Albemarle can compete
to her great advantage in growing all
the fruits of the climate with the possi-ble
exception of the pear with any
part of the peninsula."
So far as the Eastern crop is con-cerned,
the early peaches of Piedmont
Virginia have the markets almost to
themselves. It is well known that with
perhaps the exception of the apricot and
plum, the flavor of the fruits of Cali-fornia
can in no way compare with that
of this section. I have known the
Arnsden peaches of Albemarle to aver-age
$5.00 per bushel, while the first
Arnsden from the great Maryland
orchards started at forty cents per half
bushel basket, and at the same date
Crawford's early from Albemarle were
in shipping condition and brought fancy
prices. Any quantity of land thus
admirably adapted to peach culture may
be had at from $4.00 to $12.00 per acre,
depending upon location.
While not much attention has been
given here to the cultivation of the
cherry, yet no country is better adapted
to this fruit. It is indigenous to all the
high red-clay lands of this section, and
grows to great size and lives a long
life. It is practically free from insect
enemies, and in high locations the fruit
is rarely killed by frost. Magnificent
cherry trees may be seen growing in
the fence corners, and here and there in
the fields and upon the mountain slopes.
The southwest mountains in this county
are especially favorable to its growth.
The dark-red or black sorts are more
profitable than the light-colored var-ieties,
since the latter show spots from
bruises after a few hours. There is a
good profit in this fruit for those who
handle it in a proper and intelligent
manner. The writer has in mind a
gentleman who realized one season
$75.00 per tree from three trees by
crating and shipping to Northern mar-kets.
The pear, plum and quinces adapt
themselves to a variety of soils and are
at home in this climate. They should
here produce annual and full crops.
Why they do not when left alone is
well known and the remedy now equally
well known. The pear is liable to
blight, the plum is subject to attacks of
the carcidio and the quince to a fungus
disease. Cutting off the branches below
the diseased parts will usually stop the
disease. Jarring the trees and spraying
THE FRUIT INDUSTRY OF PIEDMONT VIRGINIA. 295
with Paris green, or dusting the trees
with lime and carbolic acid will subdue
the curculio, and spraying with the
Bordeaux mixture kills the quince fungi.
These fruits flourish in the clay loams
of Albemarle.
The pear here lives to an extreme
old age. I could refer to pear trees
now bearing which have been bearing
fruit for eighty odd years. The longev-ity
of this fruit, of the cherry and of
the pippin shows that here they are
surrounded by those natural conditions
most favorable to be demanded by their
plant life. Some of the fruit growers of
Albemarle have found the pear their
most profitable fruit, while others main-tain
that they realize more from the
plum. With proper treatment and hand-ling
fine returns are realized from both.
I have known Seckels from this county
to sell in Richmond, Va., for from four
and a-half cents to ten cents per pound,
and when Northern Seckels were selling
at two and a-half cents per pound the
Albemarle Seckels brought four and
a-half cents. There are orchards of this
fruit in Albemarle which have averaged
$100 per acre. The plum is also a
long-lived tree in this section, and likes
the clay soil in which it produces its
largest crops. It is here an early
bearer and, protected from the curculio,
is very profitable.
The quince properly sprayed with
the Bordeaux mixture grows vigor-ously
and produces a model fruit in
these same clay loams, and yields profit-able
returns for faithful and intelligent
attention.
What are known as "forest fruits,"
such as blackberries, whortleberries,
strawberries, dewberries, crab apples,
wild plums and cherries, are found in
great abundance in nearly all the unoc-cupied
lands and in the forests, and may
be had during the season for the mere
picking. Thousands of bushels of these
wild fruits are annually gathered for
home use and are sold in the home
markets.
The bottom lands along the mountain
streams are admirably suited to growing
strawberries. On these moist, fertile
soils the strawberry thrives with the
greatest luxuriance, and beds retain their
productiveness long after they would
be exhausted in other soils. This berry,
from Albemarle, goes into Northern
markets just when the crops of Norfolk,
Va., are exhausted and before the Mary-land
and Delaware berries are ripe. For
the small fruits the towns west of Char-lottesville,
on the Chesapeake & Ohio
Railroad, are frequently the best markets.
The possibilities of the blackberry
crop in Piedmont, Va., are beyond con-ception.
In the mountain hollows wild
blackberries of great size are abundant,
and on almost every old field and hill-side
berries of smaller size are found.
The cultivation of improved varieties
ought to be very profitable. The large
cultivated blackberries, such as Wilson's
early, Kittatinny, &c, if nicely handled
and shipped in neat packages, will usu-ally
bring higher prices than strawber-ries,
and the markets are never glutted
with them.
As the advantages this section offers
for fruit raising become more fully un-derstood
and appreciated the acreage
of fruit is being proportionately ex-tended.
The shipments of apples last
season from Albemarle county aggrega-ted
about a quarter of a million of dol-lars,
and there is invested in this county
in the grape and wine industries about
three-quarters of a million.
It will be seen from the foregoing
plain statement of facts that Piedmont
Virginia, especially that portion of it
embraced in Albemarle and adjoining
counties, is greatly blessed in the variety
and number of advantages it offers for
successful fruit culture.
With the peach on the hill-tops and
high table lands, the apple on the
mountain sides and foot-hills, with
cherry, plum and quinces, grapes, rasp-berries
and blackberries on the favorable
hill-sides and slopes, strawberries on the
rich bottom lands, all flourishing and
growing to their highest state of per-fection,
surrounded by the best and most
favorable conditions, this section is
justly entitled to be called the "Fruit
Belt of Virginia."
A TRIP TO GEORGIA.
By Hon. Daniel Needimm.
It was with more than usual interest
that I received in November, 1893, a
commission from His Excellency, the
Governor, appointing me Delegate-at-large
to the Farmers' National Congress,
to be held at Savannah, Georgia, in the
following month of December.
It was not to be my first visit to
Savannah, for in 1870 I had visited
Atlanta, Augusta, Macon and Savannah,
on my way to Florida to examine, with
a view to purchasing, a hundred thous-and
acres of land on the line of the
railroad from Savannah to Jacksonville.
These lands were in alternate sections
and were owned by a syndicate, the
representatives of which lived in Au-gusta.
The price demanded for these
lands was fifty thousand dollars. The
trip from Savannah was made somewhat
leisurely in company with members of
the syndicate with the view of enabling
me to see the character and quality of
the land and its products of native grass,
wood and timber. Having reached
Jacksonville I took into account the
embarrassing conditions which con-fronted
me in the purchase of this
property. The entire country was des-titute
of laborers who could bring to
their work a fair share of skill and intel-ligence.
There were no horses or oxen
which could be purchased or utilized in
drawing timber or lumber to the rail-road,
with the view of bringing it within
the reach of the demand of the trade
by a commercial market. There were
no roads, and apparently nothing to
make them of. Everything needed for
the development and utilization of these
lands must be acquired de novo. As I
then looked upon it, four negro laborers
were not equal to one average Northern
white man, and the enormous work of
organizing an industrial and mechanical
force which should meet the necessities
of the case were too discouraging for
further consideration. I did, however,
venture the offer of twenty-five thousand
dollars, which was politely declined.
In my official visit to Georgia to
attend the deliberations of the Farmers'
Congress twenty-three years later I had
opportunity to make enquiry concern-ing
these Florida lands, and learned
with much surprise that some of these
alternate sections had realized to sub-sequent
purchasers many times the
amount at which they were placed at
my option; in fact that one block em-bracing
five thousand acres had sold
for more than the entire price asked
for the hundred thousand.
In that visit of 1870 I had been
deeply impressed with the climatic
advantages of the State of Georgia, but
was confronted everywhere with the
labor problem. A marked illustration
of the autocracy of the newly- made
citizen presented itself as at four o'clock
in the morning, when in company with
other travelers I started out of the
depot of Charleston, S. C, in search of
a hotel. No carriage being at the
station we were obliged to walk in the
starlight hours of the early March
morning. A short distance had been
traversed when the exciting sound of
the feet of galloping horses upon the
stone pavement suddenly arrested our
attention. Nearer and nearer they came
and we were finally brought to a stand
with four mounted riders immediately in
our front. "Who are you ?" shouted one
of the horsemen in an unmistakable
Ethiopian dialect. I responded for the
company that we were travelers who
had just arrived by train and were on
our way to a hotel. It was my turn,
and I said in precisely the same lan-guage
"Who are you?" The response
was not delayed. "We are the mounted
police." At that time Boston had no
mounted police and I said enquiringly,
A TRIP TO GEORGIA. 297
"Do the police ride in Charleston?"
"Oh yes," replied the leader, "bottom
rail is top now." And so I found it in
all my journeyings through South Car-olina
and Virginia.
I remembered with great interest and
pleasure my visit to Savannah in 1870,
and in anticipation of my visit in 1893 I
had recalled the public pumps which fur-nished
for the householders and travel-ers
cool and refreshing water in all the
public squares, the ancient, staid and
imposing architecture of many of the
public and private buildings, and the
not infrequent bunches of grass which
gave a rural and not over-active look to
the pavements of the city streets. But
I found the Savannah of 1870 had been
largely vanquished and a new Savannah
had taken its place. The old wooden
pumps had given place to beautiful
fountains and hydrants supplied with
abundance of water by numerous artes-ian
wells, and a busy look inspired by
an active, domestic and foreign trade
met the eye at every turn. Buildings in
the most modern style of architecture
like the monuments rising in every
square indicated enterprise, activity and
wealth. Miles of wharfs lined the banks
of the Savannah river, at which scores
of ocean and river craft were taking in
and discharging freight to and from
distant ports. Among the magnificent
buildings the grand De Soto Hotel,
built at an expense of half a million of
dollars, with every modern convenience,
filled with visitors from all parts of the
country and the world six months in
the year ; the Telfair Academy of Art,
and the Georgia Historical Society
Museum, and the Guards Armory—
a
grand conception and realization of
military architecture—should be espe-cially
mentioned.
Having been for fifteen years a Na-tional
Bank Examiner of the United
States, I was especially interested in
the banks and banking institutions of
the city which have an aggregate capi-tal
of $3,359,400, with a surplus approxi-mating
a million dollars and undivided
profits of three hundred and two thou-sand
dollars. As illustrating the vol-ume
of business it may be said that the
average deposits in the eleven banking
institutions of the city are in excess of
five millions of dollars, and average
loans in excess of seven millions of dol-lars.
The claims made by one of the
bank officers that Savannah ranked the
third city in the South in the volume
of business, is fully established by the
fact that the net clearings as reported by
the clearing house for the year ending
December 1st, 1893, were $94,920,330.
As a shipping port for naval stores it
ranks first in the world, a total of one
million, three hundred and ten thousand
packages, of a weight of five hundred
million pounds, and of a value of over
seven million dollars, having been hand-led
in a single year. The receipts of
cotton have in two successive years
exceeded one million bales.
In the few days which it was my
pleasure to spend in attendance upon
the National Farmers' Congress, I had
opportunity, through the courtesy of
leading citizens of the city, to visit the
financial, commercial and manufacturing
centers of this prosperous and rapidly
growing city, and I am happy to bear
testimony to the well-laid and substan-tial
foundation upon which its business
interests rest.
Perhaps I cannot do better than to
quote the opening paragraph of my
first address delivered on the afternoon
of the first day of the National Con-gress
:
"This great State of Georgia, exten-sive
enough in its area to make more
than seven States of the size of Massa-chusetts,
is enabled by the natural law
to give to its population the climatic in-fluences
which secure by the produc-tiveness
of its soil the great cereals of
the North and West, as well as the
fruits, fibres and plants of a tropical
climate. It may be said with truth that
with the exception of Florida and Cali-fornia,
there is nothing grown in any of
the States of the Union which Georgia
cannot profitably produce. Its rice crop
having exceeded twenty- five million
pounds ; its cotton crop more than half
a millon of bales ; while its Indian corn,
wheat and oats have approximated in
value twenty-five millions of dollars in
a single year.
"I can recall it in my boyhood as the
298 A TRIP TO GEORGIA.
El Dorado of which the Spaniards
must have been in pursuit when they
made their first landing on the coast of
Florida. It seems odd in these later
days, when history has made us so
familiar with the placer diggings of Cali-fornia,
to recall the placer diggings of
Northern Georgia which in the year
1853 yielded gold bullion of half a mil-lion
of dollars in value. The statement
of that historical incident gives but little
idea of the wild enthusiasm which per-vaded
the length and breadth of the
country at the time of the first gold
discovery in this great State. Placer
diggings in Georgia ! How strangely
would this head-line read in a telegra-phic
communication of the associated
press, published in the daily papers of
the United States and England. And
yet it is within the realm of probability
that rich fields of gold still await the
development of the enterprising, adven-turous
miner within the limits of the
State of which Savannah is the chief
and most prosperous city." The natural
advantages of Georgia in the climatic,
agricultural and metallurgic direction
might well fill a volume. Its seacoast
and lagoon-separated islands of rare
and great fertility are actually tropical.
As you leave the coast and reach a
second plateau drained by the Savan-nah,
Ocmulgee and other rivers, you
gradually rise into a salubrious and
healthful climate, into land of strong
and productive soil, watered by grand
and to a large extent, navigable rivers,
bearing the euphonious names given by
the copper-colored natives in a pre-his-toric
time. With small capital, a healthy
body, and a mind educated by general
reading and careful observation, it is
difficult to see why the reasonable
ambitions of the average man cannot be
fully met in a Georgia home. Whether
in truck gardening, the production of
cereals, the breeding of domestic ani-mals,
the orchard and fruit productions,
timber industries, or even in rice and
cotton, the opportunities for wisely
directed labor promise more than the
average remuneration.
In my own judgment, for miners and
gold hunters, Georgia and North Caro-lina
present stronger inducements than
Colorado or California. With the greatly
improved and simplified processes for
extracting and securing the most minute
particles of gold in auriferous territories,
embracing lands of hundreds of square
miles of extent, this class of laborers
may enter Northern Georgia with reas-onable
expectations of satisfactory re-sults.
Many times since my return from my
official visit to Georgia have I been con-sulted
with regard to local prejudices
against Northern people. For my own
part, I was unable to discover any. If
men going from the North or West to
take up their homes in Southern States
will remember that slavery is an institu-tion
of the past, and that the war of the
rebellion exists only in history, there
will be no difficulty from a social stand-point.
It is easier, when mingling in
the life of the South and realizing the
degradation, ignorance and stupidity of
the average colored laborer, to put vour-self
in the place of the Southern men
who, by a constitutional provision with-out
any preliminary training, education
or social cultivation, had four millions of
people elevated to an equality under the
law by an edict of the government.
Georgia needs industrious, enterprising
and intelligent laborers, who will aid in
solving the problem of how to make
intelligent, enterprising and industrious
citizens out of its colored population.
With this embarrassment is the entire
South confronted. This enigma is not
to be solved by sending off the blacks
to States and territories in our own
country or in foreign lands, but by
patient, laborious missionary work on
the part of native white citizens, and
such adopted citizens as may be induced
by the attractive condition of soil and
climate to join in this work. The very
citizenship that has been accorded to
these people under the constitution,
while it has left a prejudice on the part
of former master and mistress, has,
through an ignorance of the meaning of
constitutional citizenship and legal lib-erty,
of itself proved a hindrance to the
progress of the colored population.
SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO.
By Erwin Ledyard.
So much has been written of late
years about the negro as a citizen, a
voter, a skilled workman and a laborer,
that it may be an acceptable change to
readers of daily newspapers to look upon
the colored man and brother in some new
light, and especially in one totally apart
from politics, polemics, statistics and
economics. Gentlemen of the Gradgrind,
and ladies of the Mrs. Jellyby, school
may pass this article by, for it will not
interest them. It deals neither in se-verely
practical facts nor moral pocket
handkerchiefs, but it does deal with the
idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of a race
of people that are ever interesting to
the student of human nature.
The negro believes firmly that it is
not good for man to be alone. He was
so fully convinced of that fact even in
what he now calls "befo' de wah"
times that he was not always satisfied
with one partner of his joys and his sor-rows,
but in many cases seemed to think
that his getting tired of one wife was
sufficient reason for his taking another.
The writer well remembers that during
his boyhood the dining-room servant
of the family, an elegant colored gen-tlemen,
who was called Townsend by
his master, but who called himself Dan-iel
Da Costa, and who generally did
pretty much as he pleased, announced
his intention of marrying a house-maid
belonging to one of the wealthiest men
in the town. The two owners viewed the
proposed alliance very kindly. The
couple were married by the pastor of a
Presbyterian church in the lecture room,
in the presence of all the colored elite
and bon ton. The bride blushed in
white tulle and orange flowers, and the
groom was resplendent in black broad-cloth
and white kid gloves, and the
ceremony was followed by a reception
and collation. We all felt quite a glow
of satisfaction over the tonyness of the
affair until the information leaked out
about a month afterwards that Mr. Da
Costa had two wives already living, one
in the city and another on the banks of
the Alabama river, up which stream he
occasionally went as a waiter on a
steamboat, on the plea of ill health
whenever the restraints of household
service became irksome to him.
The negro now is compelled to limit
himself to one wife, for with freedom
has come responsibility to the law, and
his disinclination to live alone has devel-oped
itself in another and perfectly law-ful
form. He has become a member of
various societies and organizations,
generally of a benevolent character, and
to these he devotes all the surplus en-ergy
of his nature. They have taken
the place of politics especially in the
thoughts and aspirations of the city
negro, a.nd to ride on a gaily caparisoned
horse as marshal of his society, wear-ing
a dress suit and a silk hat, with a
bright colored sash across his breast,
and a truncheon decked with ribbons in
his hand, is to reach the summit of the
hopes and ambition of many an aspir-ing
descendant of Ham. For one of
the main ends and objects of these
associations, Odd Fellows, Knights of
Tabor, Heart of Hearts, Sons of Zebe-diah,
Daughters of Deborah, Brothers
of Lazarus, Sisters of Martha, is to have
an annual parade and excursion or picnic.
These exhibitions of pomp and pagean-try
generally take place in the summer,
and it is a sight for men and angels to
see a procession of colored brothers
marching up and down the principal
streets of a Southern city on a hot day
in July or August, clad in broadcloth
and stovepipe hats, with regalia gor-geous
enough to call forth the admira-tion
of the white enthusiast in mystic
matters, who belongs to half a dozen or
more secret societies and is Past Grand of
300 SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO.
pretty much everything. Most of these
colored organizations, for the negro are
very imitative, have sword or axe bear-ers,
and sometimes both, staves with
gilded balls, and various kinds of striped
poles, while the fattest and most oily
looking brother of the lot carries with
most portentous face a big Bible or
some other large book on a crimson
cushion. Following the procession in
great state come the past Grands and
ex-High Muckamucks in carriages.
The brass band blares, the horses of the
marshals curvet and prance and whisk
their plaited tails, and the men in rega-lia
try to keep step to the music with
the proud consciousness that the eyes
of thousands are upon them. For this
great day they have saved and stinted
during the whole year, and there is
pride and joy in every drop of perspi-ration
that oozes from their foreheads.
Crowds of colored people, principally
women and children, accompany the
procession on the sidewalks and cast
admiring glances upon the members,
while from hotel, restaurant, barber shop
and private residence, members of other
societies come out to view the parade
critically with emulation in their eyes,
and condescension in their approval.
This love of parade and display has
been carried to a very amusing length
in the city of Mobile, Ala. Before the
fire department of that place became a
paid one the volunteer department used
to have a grand annual parade on the
9th of April. Attached to the depart-ment
wis a company of quadroons,
called Creole Fire Company No. 1.
This company took no part in the pa-rade
on the 9th of April, but later in
the month had a torchlight procession
at night. After the establishment of a
paid system the day parade and torch-light
procession were both discontinued,
but in the meanwhile a number of young
colored men, impressed by the grandeur
of the display of colored fire and lamp-light
by the Creole company, and fired
by an ambition to excel it, organized a
society, ostensibly for benevolent pur-poses,
but whose real object was to make
a grand night parade in the month of
May. The members wore regular fire-men's
uniform, and the officers carried
trumpets. An old hand engine and an
ancient hose carriage were purchased,
and the society took the name of "Pro-tector
No. 11." It never went to a fire,
but its members wore their black hats
and red shirts with as jaunty an air on
the night of parade as if they had been
fighting the devouring element for years.
It was such a pronounced success that
it was soon followed by a similar organ-ization,
and the two then paraded to-gether.
The last time they were seen
by the writer they had about twelve
hundred men and boys in line, includ-ing
the hose companies ; pretty much
all the livery stable vehicles had been
engaged by them, and the florists of the
city found difficulty in filling an order
for a week after the parade.
Of course, this sort of thing costs
money, but the negroes are more than
willing to spend it when they feel
that they are part of a glittering pa-geant
in which horses walk between
the ropes in imitation of sure-enough
fire horses, and sable beauties
stand or recline on platforms as the
Goddess of Liberty or Venus rising
from the sea. And their bills are all
paid. This statement leads naturally to
a consideration of the fidelity of the
treasurers of the various organizations
that have been mentioned. There are
a few more black sheep among them
than there are among those in similar
positions of trust in white societies, but
the great majority are faithful, for if
they had no other reasons for being so,
dread of social ostracism would be a
sufficient one. For, as has been said
before, the negro is a gregarious
creature and fond of his kind.
The female societies also have their
excursions and their p: cnics, though
their processions are mainly limited to
funerals. On these mournful occasions
they come out strong, both in numbers
and in manifestations of grief. But
mixed with the sorrow for the departed
sister, which is honest and sincere, is an
intense enjoyment of the sad occasion
and of every incident and duty con-nected
with it. The same can be said
of the male societies. When a member
of one of these organizations, either male
or female, dies after the middle of the
SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO. 301
week, the remains always lie in state
until Sunday, so that as big a funeral as
possible can be had. To visit the sick
and bury the dead are two of the main
obligations that these colored brothers
and sisters take upon themselves, and
they never find the religious services at
funerals long or tedious. Many of these
organizations are connec ed with some
branch of African Christianity, but it is
not within the province of this article to
touch upon the religion of the negro.
Mention has been made of colored
Odd Fellows. Their lodges are not
recognized by the white Odd Fellows
in this country. It is said that they
received their authority, observances,
ritual, &c, from an English source. It
is certain that in their parades they carry
the British flag alongside the stars and
stripes. There are quite a number of
them in the South. One of the largest
processions witnessed by the writer last
spring in New Orleans was that of these
colored Odd Fellows. It seemed as if
they would never get done coming up
St. Charles avenue.
But these societies are not confined to
cities. They exist also in the country,
and the negro house servant or laborer,
male and female, would sooner go hun-gry
than fail to pay his or her monthly
dues. The etiquette in these country
societies is very strict on one point, and
that is that the members shall never fail
to give the titles of "Mr.," "Mrs." and
"Miss" when they meet or address each
other. Occasionally they have candy
pullings and other festive gatherings,
but the most momentous occasions with
them are when the funeral sermon of
some member is preached after he or
she has been dead some six months or
more. For the negro enjoys the luxury
of melancholy. His favorite melodies
are plaintive, and the songs that colored
children sing in their games are in a
minor key.
But there are some votaries of style
and fashion among these rural negroes.
There are many such in the cities,
where house servants, ladies' maids,
valets, barbers, hotel waiters and their
wives and daughters constitute an aris-tocracy
that quite looks down on
ordinary "colored pussons." The term
"nigger" is now considered very bad
form indeed among the upper ten of
colored society. The entertainments of
these aristocrats "are conducted with
such a strict regard to form and cere-mony
that some of the participants in
these solemn functions are afraid to
show that they are enjoying themselves,
lest it may be considered low and vulgar.
These exclusives are very observant of
those who hire and employ them, and
in their endeavor to imitate them fre-quently
produce unconsciously very
amusing caricatures. The usages of
white society have an influence over
them that sometimes leads to remark-able
results. Here is a case in point
and with it I conclude this article. The
custom of making and receiving New
Year's calls has fallen into desuetude in
most of the large cities of the country.
In some of the Southern cities, how-ever,
the practice still prevails to a
limited extent. In one of these cities
some of the high-toned colored ladies
have also taken to receiving. This is
done in their own homes even when
they are house servants, for it is diffi-cult
to get house servants in the city
alluded to to live on the premises of the
employer, or to remain on them after
dark. Last New Year's day two sable
dames, ornaments of colored society,
prepared themselves for receiving their
friends, and were so impressed by their
own magnificence that they procured an
open carriage and drove around the
principal streets in order that the public
might not be deprived of so brilliant a
spectacle. One was attired in red satin,
low neck and short sleeves, with a
string of paste jewels around her neck,
white mittens up to her elbows and
white slippers. The other was similarly
dressed, except that the color of her
gown was blue. They returned home
with the proud consciousness that they
had been the observed of all observers,
and received the congratulations of a
host of friends.
LETTERS FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN FARMERS,
GIVING THEIR EXPERIENCE IN THE SOUTH—XI.
[The letters published in this issue form the eleventh instalment in the series.
These communications are published in response to numerous inquiries
from Northern people who desire to know more about agricultural conditions
in the South, and what is being accomplished by settlers from other sections
of the country. These letters were written for the most part by practical
farmers and fruit-growers, chiefly Northern and Western people who have
made their homes in the South. The actual experiences of these settlers,
as set forth in these letters, are both interesting and instructive to those
whose minds are turned Southward.
—
Editor.]
From the Blizzards of Nebraska to the
Sunshine of Louisiana.
L. S. Hatch, Crowley, La.—During
the war I spent two years in Louisiana
as a soldier, and although at that time
some things were not as pleasant as
could be desired, still many times after
returning to my Northern home my
thoughts would turn to the fair land of
Louisiana, to its mild and even climate,
its orchards and flower gardens, its
productive soil, and many other advan-tages
it affords over the North.
In 1888 my health became so im-paired
that it became necessary for me
to seek a warmer climate. I sold out
what little property I had accumulated
and bade good-bye to the blizzard
beaten prairies of Nebraska and pulled
for the "old camping ground," and
once more hoisted the Stars and Stripes,
this time over my own home, with the
same men for neighbors who had
helped to make it so unpleasant for me
during my first visit to this section of
country. I certainly find a great differ-ence
in them as soldiers and as neighbors
and friends.
We have rice for our principal and
money-making crop here instead of corn
or wheat, as compared with Nebraska
or other Northern States. Rice is
raised at about the same expense as
wheat is raised in Nebraska, the same
machinery being used for seeding,
harvesting and thrashing the crop as is
used in any of the Northern States for
a crop of grain.
In the Northern States wheat is raised
on land worth from $30 to $60 per acre,
and from ten to fifteen bushels is con-sidered
a fair yield. Now, at the price
of wheat for the last ten years, say fifty
to seventy- five cents, the farmer will
hardly have money enough to pay the
expense of the crop, and he considers
himself fortunate if the balance is not
on the wrong side of the ledger. Rice
is raised on lands worth from $10 to $15
per acre, and ten to fifteen barrels per
acre considered a fair crop, worth from
$2 to $3 per barrel. Then, again, these
prairie lands are well adapted to the
culture of sugar cane. This is acknowl-edged
by agriculturists everywhere to
be the best paying crop that is raised
anywhere in the United States.
Another advantage this country
possesses over the North is its mild
winters. There are six months of the
year in the North when the farmer has
all he can do to keep himself and his
stock from suffering with cold, thus
leaving him only six months in which
to earn something that is usually con-sumed
the next winter. The farmer of
Southwest Louisiana has the entire year
in which to labor. He usually does his
plowing in December and January,
while his stock run on the prairies or in
his pasture the year round. All kinds of
vegetables do well here, and with a
little care and attention the farmer can
have a garden in the winter as well as
in the summer. It is also an excellent
fruit country ; all of the fruits that grow
LETTERS FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN FARMERS, xo-in
the North, and many that will not
grow there, are raised here with little or
no attention.
The timber and waste places are
filled with blackberries, plums and other
fruits. There is nothing to prevent the
farmer from preserving and canning all
the fruit that a family can use. I have
a very large family, but have had fruit
on my table nearly every meal for a
year, and still have some seventy-five
jars of fruit left from last year.
The greatest drawback this country
has is its poor school system, but this
is improving very rapidly.
The town of Crowley is well supplied
with public schools and colleges, and is
one of the most prosperous towns in
the State of Louisiana. Farmers of this
section are fast learning the benefits of
diversified farming, and hereafter will
raise their own meats, corn and other
grain and not depend on other sections
to furnish them so largely as in the
past. Since coming to Louisiana I
have made rice raising my principal
business, and this year will put in about
300 acres of rice, besides a nice field of
sugar cane.
Good pure water is obtained at a
depth of from twelve to twenty feet,
but cistern water is used mostly for
drinking purposes. The native people
of this section of country are an easy-going
people, and I believe are the
happiest people in the world. They
told us when we came here we would
starve, but we told them while we are
starving that they would get pretty
lean and hungry. I find them to be a
kind-hearted, generous and hospitable
people, and with but few exceptions
without very much ambition to better
their condition.
There is plenty of room here for
thousands of people who are being
frozen up in the fall and thawed out
every spring, plenty of room for them
to come here and build up a home for
themselves and their children. .
Fifty Cents to Five Dollars an Acre for
Fruit Lands That Rival Those
of California.
W. P. Rea, Verona, Miss.—I was
born in Pennsylvania, moved to Illinois
in 1847, lived there until 1862, went to
Kentucky and lived until the close of
the war. I then moved to Tennessee,
lived there until two years ago last fall,
when I moved to this country to engage
in the horticultural business.
I think, for apples, peaches, plums,
cherries, grapes, and all kinds of berries,,
that we have the very best country.
Thousands of acres of land in this sec-tion
can be bought at from fifty cents to
five dollars per acre, that will rival the
famed fruit lands of California. As for
health, I do not think there is a more
healthy country in America than right
here. For society, we have good
Christian, high-toned people. In the
country we have five months' free
school ; most of the incorporated
towns have ten months' free school.
Red clover and most all the tame
grasses do well here. All the root crops,
onions, potatoes, beets, etc., grow to
perfection. It is a good average corn
and wheat country. Hogs, sheep and
cattle are raised here cheaper than in
any Northern State. Tomatoes, water-melons,
cantaloupes, cucumbers and all
kinds of vegetables grow to perfection.
I have just finished, May 20th, shipping
a very profitable crop of strawberries
and in two weeks will begin on tomatoes,
dewberries and blackberries, which can
be had for the gathering all over the
country. The climate is excellent, the
mercury rarely goes above ninety-two
and seldom goes below twenty-five
above zero.
This country offers fine opportunities
for settlers. Our fruit trains place us as
close to the markets as those living in
Tennessee or Kentucky. Produce
gathered this morning is in St. Louis
to-morrow morning, and the next morn-ing
in Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee
and St. Paul, Omaha or Pittsburg.
From the Grower of the "Biggest Pear
and Longest Cotton" Exhibited at
the Columbian Exposition.
Wm. Manning, Goodwin, Ark.—
I
have been requested to state my reasons
for leaving the North and coming South,
and to give my experience in farming
here, and also to compare farming here
with farming at the North, etc.
3o4 LETTERS FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN FARMERS.
I moved to this place from Will
county, 111., in the fall of 1876. I had
several reasons for changing my loca-tion,
chief among which was to secure
land for a large family of boys. Another
reason, I had got tired of feeding my
stock five months out of the twelve. I
was brought up in a nursery in the
East where we had fruit to eat from the
table or the orchard or garden every
month in the year. Years spent in the
nursery business and general farming
in the West disgusted me, so I left
there and here I am. If I do not have
fruit here when I want it, it is my
own fault. Peach trees bear at two
years old. I have gathered eight bush-els
of strawberries from a bed 20x60
feet. They are a never-failing crop
here, and so are raspberries. Thousands
of bushels of blackberries go to waste
here every year. That we beat the
world on apples is not news.
The biggest pear and the longest
cotton at the World's Fair were pro-duced
in St. Francis county, and by the
undersigned. I have sold the past year
$600 worth of hogs and cattle that did
not cost me more than 20 per cent, of
that amount. Range in my neighbor-hood
is practically unlimited. Most
people here make no provision for win-tering
stock. As it costs nothing but
the labor involved to put up hay, a few
of us make ample provision to feed in
bad weather, of which we had consid-erable
the past winter.
This region (the western part of the
county) is prairie, interspersed with
strips and ridges of timber. Here the
settler finds material for his house, fuel,
fences and stables on his own land, or
close to it.
In traveling through here, one sees
thousands of acres of prairie just as it
was when the Indian and the buffalo
played hide and seek, before the eyes
of the white man gazed upon its wide
expanse.
Why, you ask, is it not fenced and
producing crops ? Simply because it is
not adapted to the growth of cotton and
corn without fertilization, and drainage
in the low places. Without manure,
under favorable conditions, I have made
one-half bale of cotton and twenty-five
bushels of corn to the acre ; with ma-nure
I have made one bale of cotton
and eighty bushels of corn per acre.
Sweet potatoes and millet do finely, and
stock peas grow luxuriantly. I have
had the soil analyzed and it compares
favorably with timber soil.
In the North farmers try to raise
cattle and horses on land worth fifty
dollars per acre. It requires three acres
to the head. Here a man can graze as
many cattle, horses or mules, as he is
able to own, on the land of some other
person without cost, and cut all the hay
he wants. I have been asked to insti-tute
comparisons between here and the
North. It is a rule of logic that com-parisons
are not admissible except
between things of the same class, nature
or kind. Under this rule I cannot in
all things make comparisons. Cotton
is our money crop, simply because any
one, even a child, can make and gather
it. It requires but little capital, and the
man who raises it exclusively will have
nothing to divide when he steps down
and out.
When I say we I mean the majority.
There is about as much in fifty- cent
wheat as there is in seven cent cotton.
I make two crops of Irish potatoes a
year, a crop of oats, and a crop of corn
and stock peas on same land in one
season.
The State is second to none in its
timber and mineral resources.
Three railroads run through this
county. We have bottom land as rich
as the Nile valley ; hill land for the
sheep raiser, and prairie and timber
land for the man who wants to go into
general farming and stock raising.
The latitudinarian in religion can find
consolation in every school house in the
land, as everyone is a church. Church
members will find organizations of their
respective beliefs in every village.
We levy a five-mills tax for school
purposes, five mills for county purposes
and five mills as a State tax. These
are the maximum taxes for the purposes
named. Stock water never fails in this
region, and the best of well water is
found at a depth of thirty feet.
I came here with a wife and six boys,
and have had three additions to my
LETTERS FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN FARMERS. 305
family since. One child, born here,
died of congestion of the brain. All
the rest are alive and well. I have had
one chill in seventeen years. Health
here is mainly a question of care in
living. Are Northern people welcome ?
I have served two terms in the Arkansas
legislature, which is the best answer I
can make. Land on the prairies or in
woods is worth from $3 to $5 per acre,
and improved farms from $10 to $50
per acre, according to location and
improvement.
East Tennessee.
E. L. Giffin, Loudon, Tenn.—Com-ing
here eight years ago from North-western
Ohio I have had ample oppor-tunitv
to observe the advantages that
the South possesses over the North, and
more especially that part of the South
commonly denominated "East Tennes-see."
First and foremost is the climatic
advantages, and to those engaged in
my calling (farming and dairying) this
is of momentous import. Here in-stead
of having to feed seven months
out of twelve, as was the case in Ohio,
we can by proper management have
grazing nine months in the year, thus
lessening the expense of keeping cows
and rearing live stock at least one-third.
We can plow almost all the winter, and
thus with less force we can cultivate
much more land, and are not compelled
to keep through the winter a lot of
idle horses to enable us to prepare our
land when spring opens. We have a
longer season for planting, thus enabling
us to do it in order and without undue
hurry and consequent neglect ; this is
true both of spring and fall planting
and sowing. Everything that grows
and flourishes in the Northern States
grows equally well or better here.
This is true of cereals, grasses and
fruits of all sorts. For dairying, hog
rearing and poultry there is no better
country anywhere than East Tennessee.
Our woodland furnishes mast in abun-dance.
Corn and 'peas grow here as
they do nowhere else. This is the
natural home of red clover, and all in
all it is the country for the dairyman
and hay raiser. Poultry is free from
disease, and because of our genial
climate can be raised cheaply and suc-cessfully
at all seasons of the year.
Our lands here in the Sweetwater
valley are naturally productive, and
are more responsive and give better
results for manure and tillage than any
lands I have ever known. And another
reason for saying this is the country to
come to is that we are near the market.
The cotton country south of us fur-nishes
a ready and nearby market for all
our surplus of every sort,—grain and
meat, butter and eggs, fruit and vegeta-bles,
mules and horses, and so long as
cotton is grown this market will exist.
Again, lands are still cheap here, and the
thousands of men now living on rented
property or encumbered homes in the
North could come South and by indus-try
soon possess a home and compe-tence
of their own. The farms of all
this Southern country are too large, and
consequently not cultivated up to half
their capacity. More than half the
country is yet in forests only waiting to
be cleared to produce in the greatest
profusion. Land is as I have said, still
cheap, but with the tide of immigration
that is coming this way it has for the
past five years been going up, and is
bound to continue so to do for many
years to come.
Here in this sunny land Northern in-valids
may double the span of life which
they may expect if they remain amid
the arctic rigors of Northern winters.
Yellow fever and such epidemics are un-known
in East Tennessee, and for gen-eral
health this region stands second to
none on earth. We are free from both
the Arctic cold and torrid heat of the
North, the mercury rarely going to
within ten degrees of zero in winter and
never going above ninety-five degrees in
summer.
Our timber is abundant and we have
the natural waterways to bring it in the
crude state right to the railroad, where
it can be manufactured and sent in fin-ished
form to the markets of the world.
Our iron and coal are inexhaustible, to
say nothing of the marble, slates and
dozens of other valuable deposits. All
these things I say conspire to make
East Tennessee a great country, and
there is no better place for the man
3o6 LETTERS FROM NOR THERN AND WESTERN FARMERS.
wanting a home, or the capitalist, or
manufacturer to locate than in East
Tennesee. To mention two little things
that now offer an opening to save and
to amass a fortune, and they are these:
We need at Loudon a canning factory
to put up our tomatoes, sweet corn, etc.,
and send it to market in that form, and
we need a practical man to handle
poultry, and dress and ship it and put
our March fryers on the Eastern market.
These are only two of the many open-ings
that are here awaiting the right
man, and I assure you there is a supply
for both and money in it to boot.
Has Never Regretted Going To Texas.
Morgan W. Stone, Berclair, Tex.
—
The writer removed to this portion of
Texas in the winter of 1877 and has
never had occasion to regret the step.
Goliad county, and especially the terri-tory
adjacent to Berclair, is rich and
fertile, and produces magnificent crops.
Farmers are fast discovering the wisdom
of diversifying. The growing season
extends through nine months in the
year, and the new year frequently finds
the luscious melon on the vine, and
cotton in full bloom. The soil is a black
sandy loam, is easy to cultivate, and
produces well. The climate is mild,
and healthful, and ice even the thickness
of glass is of unusual occurrence.
Those afflicted with weak lungs often
find here a permanent cure. Lands
range in price from three dollars to ten
dollars per acre, according to location,
and the length of time they have been
in cultivation.
An "Intelligent Immigration" Wanted.
George D. Pool, Elizabeth City,
N. C.—In my opinion, the fundamental
principles must combine in order to
secure any degree of prosperity to the
tillers of the soil. 1st—favorable climate
and fertility of soil (natural or artificial) ;
2d—labor at command; 3d — market
value which will yield the. producer a
profit above the cost of production.
First. Much of the farming land of
this section is susceptible of a high
degree of cultivation, and responds
promptly to the application of plant
food in any form, whether compost from
the barnyard or commercial fertilizer.
Climate advantages (other things being
equal) enable us to ship crops to the
Northern markets from ten to fifteen
days in advance of Virginia truckers.
Second. Labor is easy to secure
when fairly and justly dealt with ; from
$10 to $12 per month and board rations
is the average price.
Third. My own success has been
limited, the only crops that have paid
being cabbage, onions, peas, potatoes
(sweet and Irish). My theory is that
there is a future for small fruit, espe-cially
strawberries and raspberries, in
this section. Asparagus and celery will
also, I think, pay if properly managed.
Farms must be cut up into small ones,
say from ten to twenty acres each ; in-tensive
methods rather than extensive
ones followed ; rotation of crops and
constant tillage, rather than letting land
lie fallow, whereby noxious weeds secure
a hold and are most difficult to eradi-cate.
Our seasons are long enough to per-mit
two crops, and often three, to be
grown on the same soil.
Seeding the land with field peas at
the last working of cereal crops is equal
to a coating of manure.
Many of our people keep up the old
time "befo de wah" style of farming,
and are thus left behind in the race of
life. This is one of the difficulties in
the way of general prosperity. The
ancient worm fence that requires a
heavy outlay for new rails every year is
another. Mortgaged farms are a crying
evil. Land is left idle because owners
cannot command means to cultivate it.
An intelligent immigration, with brawn
and brain, would be of incalculable ser-vice
in making this section what it by
right should be, one of the "garden
spots" of North Carolina.
G.
In Southern Missouri.
S. Kellam, Mountain Grove,
Wight county, Mo.—Very much which
has been said by your correspondents
of States in this latitude and sections of
like altitude applies to this Ozark region
of Southern Missouri. The altitude of
our valleys will range from 1000 feet to
1300 feet, and that of our uplands from
LETTERS FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN FARMERS. 507
1300 feet to 1600 feet. Our soil is a
clay loam with more or less gravel, and
our subsoil red clay, also gravelly. Our
timber is oak of almost all varieties,
together with elm, ash, maple, walnut
butternut, hickory, etc. Tracts of pine
are interspersed. The surface ranges
Irom flat to broken and from rocky to
clear clay loam.
Approximately one-third of our land
is level and free from stones, one-third
is rolling and somewhat stony and
one-third broken and rocky. This last
third is available for pastures or for
fruit lands.
Our annual rainfall will vary from
thirty-six to forty-eight inches. Sum-mer
midday heat from 8o° to 96 , sel-dom
above 90 . The nights are always
cool as compared with summer nights
in Northern Iowa. The winter morning
temperature will range from 30 to 0°,
rarely colder, though io° and even 15
below have been known.
Changes of temperature are frequent,
the extremes only lasting from three to
seven days as a rule. I need hardly
add that to persons of reduced physical
force and vitality, the change from the
climate of Northern Iowa to that of
South Missouri is both pleasing and
beneficial.
As to society, the old settlers, like
the soil, respond promptly to good
treatment, for "with what measure ve
meet it shall be measured to you again."
The first settlers tell us that they
came to this wilderness fifty years ago
to get away from negroes and the stings
oi slavery. Negroes have never been
welcome here ; hence they are conspic-uous
by their absence. Some counties
had no resident negroes before the rail-road
came and perhaps the same is true
now.
The roistering elements of the North-west,
the more sedate habits of the
Northeast and the mercurial but respon-sive
and hospital natures of the South
meet here on common ground. "The
Lord is the father of us all." He cares
for all alike ; this is the common ground
upon which we stand, and standing thus
we shall never fall.
I came here with the Kansas City,
Memphis & Birmingham Railroad ten
years ago. At that time there were but
few Northern people in the country, but
they are coming rapidly now. Up to a
date five or six years ago many Northern
people who were looking for "pastures
new" were turned away from this section
by wild rumors of conditions prevailing
here, which during the war cropped out
in "Bush Whackers", and since the war
has developed "Bald Knobbers."
Such developments were only local
and feudal, and the conditions of idle-ness
which fostered them have passed
away. All have now something else to
think of and work for. For "idle hands"
and empty minds Satan must now look
somewhere else.
Missouri stands now first among the
States in Sunday-school work. See
report of National Sunday-school Con-vention.
Our public school standards are every
year lifted higher, more months of school
required and higher grades of teachers,
with better school methods demanded.
The people from North and from
South, from East and from West, now
join hands and hearts in a common
effort to promote intellectual and moral,
as well as material progress.
SOUTHERN DEVELOPMENT—II.
By D. B. Dyer.
Not all the points made in this article
will be new to your readers. The object
is to stimulate enough interest in the
industrial prosperity of the South to
induce people of the North to come and
see the country and judge for them-selves
of its advantages, and to make
some suggestions that may be of value
to the people of the South.
The present time seems most favora-ble
for development. The people who
come South will do well, and make
money for themselves, and at the same
time advance the cause of civilization
by rescuing from waste a fertile territory
which is only partially occupied, al-though
it is in the very heart and path-way
of the future great commerce of
the country.
The present depressed times are
likely to bring most emphatically to the
attention of investors the superior ad-vantages
of the South, and nothing but
a shortsighted policy or misunderstand-ing
of the true situation will keep back
the progress it deserves.
Blessings are multiplied by the joint
contributions of a united people, and the
decline of partisanship that has divided
the North and South suggests the obli-gation,
and inspires the hope, that a
proper sense of national pride will be
engendered, so that the splendid indus-trial
record of the past will be outdone
by the development in the future of the
great possibilities discovered anew in
the South.
The vital solution of the Southern
development problem is found in adopt-ing
the uniform way of all ages, viz, by
improving each opportunity to better its
condition, by the exertions of its own
people and by inviting others to join in
and enjoy the excess of possibilities it
possesses, but does not utilize. By this
operation almost unconsciously the
South will take on extraordinary
growth.
Southern development is a matter to
be dealt with in a plain familiar way.
There is nothing to be gained by booms,
or by advertising what the South does
not possess. Such trifling with every-day
truths and interests will prevent its
real and substantial advantages from
being developed by diverting attention
from the controlling and significant
point, which must at all times be kept
at the front. Booms lead people away
from practical realities into a fairy-land,
and when they rub their eyes they dis-cover
there was not enough back of
them, and they are left to realize that
when practical development is discred-ited
genuine progress is retarded.
The best section of a country is un-doubtedly
the one that can bring the
most comfort and happiness with least
exertion to all classes of its citizens, and
it seems that nature has endowed the
South with a view to promote prosper-ity
and make the struggle in life as easy
as possible.
The people of the South should con-tribute
liberally and redouble their
efforts to properly advertise its advan-tages
and attract attention.
Immigration and colonization com-panies
should be organized controlling
from 100,000 to 1,000,000 acres of land,
and thrifty people brought here to
settle.
Bringing people from the old world
and from different over-crowded parts
of this country to the fresh and inviting
fields of the South is a noble occupa-tion.
Few achievements wrought
through the efforts or energies of great
men are more worthy of glorification
than the efforts of those who devote
their lives to the bettering of the con-dition
of their fellow-man by inducing
308
SO UTHERN BE VEL OPMENT. 309
and assisting them to remove into and
develop new fields that are so sure to
prove remunerative.
The immigrants who assisted in the
development of the great West were
types of manhood fit for citizens of any-country.
The pioneer emigrant is a
brave, strong, self-reliant seeker after a
fortune or a home, who is able to sur-mount
all obstacles in his path and to
wrest success from the grudging hand
of fate. They belong to the aimy that
is lured from home in quest of some-thing
better ; they are always hopeful,
and expect the benefit to be derived to
be commensurate with the sacrifices
they make. They suffer privations,
but by arduous toil and deprivation they
devote their best energies to building up
the country.
The South is nearly as barren of
development today as the West was
twenty-five years ago, but taken as a
whole the advantages of the South are
greatly superior to those of other parts
of the United States, and it would seem
that this is a particularly good time to
advertise, owing to the admirable way
in which the South has stood the finan-cial
crisis. This fact should not be
allowed to escape the thoughtful atten-tion
of investors, who, when they in-quire
closely about such phenomenal
records, must conclude that the South
has superior advantages.
Prosperous times all over the United
States, and the lack of manufactories in
the South, have permitted capitalists to
operate factories profitably in the East
that could not compete with factories
here, if such factories were properly
equipped and managed. This fact be-coming
recognized will force a change
in the situation very soon and ought to
bring about a great many removals of
plants to the South. Everybody would
be helped by such a change, as the
works could be operated at reduced
cost, and the goods sold in a home
market.
The sun shines on no fairer land nor
more productive soil than is embraced
within the boundaries of the Southern
States, and yet little is being done by
the citizens here to inform the world of
these facts.
The Southern people as a rule refrain
from boasting of the advantages of their
country, in fact, they do not begin to
realize what advantages it possesses,
but the conviction is iorcing itself even
upon the most conservative citizens that
it is time to let the world know some-thing
of the abundant and obvious ad-vantages
of the South.
Its cheap timber, grazing, coal, min-eral
and agricultural land, its grand
water-powers and magnificent harbors,
when properly advertised will surely
cause men and money to come here.
The present population unaided can-not
for centuries develop them, and of
what value are productive soil, magnifi-cent
forests, untold minerals, grand
rivers and harbors, a genial climate with
bright skies, and, in fact, every advan-tage
on earth if they are not utilized
and developed ?
It seems that the best has been re-served
for the last, and that during the
next twenty- five years the North will
furnish the men and money to work
this diversified gold mine.
The population of the South per
square mile averages only about one-fifth
that of the average Northern State.
The negroes make up a large percent-age
of this, but their presence is not an
insurmountable obstacle to the develop-ment
of this section. This branch of
population will only be added to by
natural increase, while the whites will
receive large additions by immigration.
If the white population today in the
South were as numerous per square
mile as it is in the North, there would
be none too much negro labor, and it
would be utilized in factories as well as
upon the farms, which would result in
diversifying it, and when better paid
the negroes would have money to
buy homes, and hence become better
citizens.
The large plantations of the South
should be sub-divided into eighty and
one hundred and sixty acre tracts and
sold to whites, and into smaller tracts
and sold to negroes, who are bound by
the ties of home, and are mutually in-terested
in the prosperity of the South.
A division of large plantations, and the
sale of the same, would enable many
3io SOUTHERN DEVELOPMENT.
negroes to secure a small patch of land.
The better senses of this wasteful class
should be stimulated to turn them from
dependents into independence, and grad-ually
they will become more useful citi-zens.
These unfortunate people, a por-tion
of humanity whose destiny is to a
considerable extent in their own hands,
must be encouraged, not only to secure
homes of their own, but to educate their
children in a practical way. The sub-division
and sale of plantations to
negroes would be an act of practical
development and advancement involv-ing
a moral and business principle.
Had it not been for slavery the South
would most likely today be in advance
of the North in manufacturing. The
abolition of slavery has stimulated native
inventiveness and skill. The South is
studying subjects now that were never
dreamed of before the war, and the
inflexible rule, founded in wisdom, that
ignorance and idleness cannot gain as
much as intelligence and industry, has
been prominently brought to the front,
and its influence in the results already
reached does credit to its citizens.
When the tramp of the marching army
of immigrants is heard in the South the
development will go on in storm and
sunshine, in heat and cold, and the waste
land will give way to numberless happy
and joyous homes. Private enterprise
will take hold and occupy every nook
and corner of this country which is
overflowing with an embarrassment of
good things. Cities innumerable will
be built where now stand virgin forests.
Those who come South and farm as
they do in the North can make money
much faster here than there, but farmers
must diversify their crops. If they
would combine so they could load a
whole train at once with small fruits and
vegetables, the truck farming industry
alone would furnish a large revenue for
the planters, and ample work for the
railroads that are at present doing so
little business.
The South is to-day producing as
good a grade of coarse cotton goods as
is made anywhere. After the closest
study one is convinced that results for
the future will show advantages for man-ufacturing
here that will more than neu-tralize
the disadvantages, and make it
difficult for the North to compete suc-cessfully
in many lines. For many
years to come the South is bound to
furnish the world with the prime staple
requisite for clothing, and with her vir-gin
forests of hard woods, even within a
few miles fro n the limits of the large
cities it is surely a good field for the
manufacture of furniture, cars, wagons,
etc.
It is remarkable what great interest
is being taken in the topic the South-ern
States magazine is so ably placing
before the country. Never before have
the important interests of the South been
so thoroughly discussed, and this may
account in a measure for the same. It
is evident the South wants no interest in
idle fancies and alluring projects that
have of late so thoroughly saturated
different parts of the world and usurped
the place of legitimate enterprise and
left ruin in the place of prosperity. Its
business must be rehabilitated on a
solid basis, and the tendency is to start
only such projects as are most in
demand.
Wonderful as the march of material
progress in this country has been within
the past century, it is certain that the
future will show a Greater record.
THE SOUTHERN STATES.
Southern States.
Published by "the
Manufacturers' Record Publishing Co.
Manufacturers' Record Building,
BALTIMORE, MD.
SUBSCRIPTION, = $1.50 a Year.
WILLIAM H. EDMONDS,
Editor and Manager.
BALTIMORE, AUGUST, 1894.
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.
The Welis Excitement.
A large number of people in England
are suffering much agony of soul because
of some harrowing tales that Ida B. Wells,
a negro adventuress from Memphis, Tenn.,
has been telling them. According to this
young woman, who has a florid imagina-tion
and a glib tongue, and who is smart
enough and unscrupulous enough to use
both for personal advancement through
any available channel, legitimate or other-wise,
lynching is a common pastime in the
South, and negroes are lynched indis-criminately
and for trival offences. Even
small children, she relates, are frequently
thus dealt with, and men, women and
children generally are murdered or
maimed without provocation and without
subsequent punishment.
It would seem to be a work of super-erogation
to make a denial of these pal-pable
slanders, but, impossible as it
may seem, there have been found people
who believed all this.
It is quite true that there is lynching in
the South, but there is only one crime for
which lynching is resorted to, and so long
as men shall deserve to be called men, the
day will never come when that crime shall
seem so slight an offence as that any
punishment less swift and sure and terrible
will be thought adequate.
It is true, also, that more negroes have
been lynched than white men, and for the
reason that 99 per cent, of the assaults
upon women and girls have been commit-ted
by negroes.
Happily, this crime is comparatively
very rare, and the awful punishment is
therefore likewise rare. When it does
happen and the penalty follows, the few
fanatical South-haters of the North take it
up with malignant outcry, and distort and
magnify and multiply everything pertain-ing
to it—except the crime. That is lost
sight of.
We assert confidently and positively and
without qualification that there is less dis-order,
less violation of law, less crime in
the South than in any other part of this
country of like area, or with the same pop-ulation
; that there are fewer murders in
the South (including lynchings) than in the
rest of the country in proportion to popu-lation
or in any other part of the country
having like population, and that the ne-groes
are better treated and are subjected
312 EDITORIAL.
to fewer cruelties and hardships than the
same laboring class in the North. Any
careful newspaper reader who will
follow closely the history of every
day for a period of time, or any honest
investigator who will take the time and
trouble to carefully and impartially study
the South, will confirm this statement.
Once in a while in some remote and thinly
peopled section a lustful brute will invade
an unprotected home or waylay in some
obscure spot along the highway a helpless
child, and when the hellish deed is known
and the perpetrator of it has been caught
and his guilt amply proved, the world is
quickly rid of him and the community
protected against a repetition of the crime.
But these occurrences are infrequent. Only
a few days ago the writer visited in a
sparsely settled part of Southern Georgia,
a plantation comprising Sooo acres, which
is worked entirely by negro labor. The
manager's home is nearly in the centre of
it, two or three miles from any other habi-tation.
Much of the time he is in distant
parts of the plantation all day, his wife
and children being left alone from break-fast
to supper, and yet no harm is ever
feared or thought of. A question as to
possible danger was laughed at. Indeed,
so amicable are the relations between the
employer and his laborers, and such is his
confidence in their loyalty that it was con-fidently
asserted that they would be the
family's most ready and faithful defenders
and protectors in case of threatened
danger. And this is not exceptional. It
is typical. It is the rule. But if unhappily
here or elsewhere crime of the sort indica-ted
should be committed, the whole com-munity
would quickly—and rightly—or-ganize
itself into searching party, court,
jury and executioner. And the better class
of negroes approve of this. It was but a
little while ago that a party of negroes in one
of the Southern States caught and lynched
one of their own race, who had criminally
and brutally assaulted a colored girl.
The newspapers report that the Wells
woman, being sumptuously cared for the
while, traveled over England making ad-dresses
at all important towns, her audi-ences
comprising prominent journalists,
clergymen, government officials, doctors,
society people and others. It is said that
many of them wept over her blood-curd-ling
recitals, and in some places lengthy
resolutions were passed denouncing the
people of the South for the atrocities they
practice upon the negro population.
It is impossible to understand how any
number of intelligent people in England
or anywhere else could be made to believe
that there exists throughout a fourth of
the area of the United States, or in any
part of the United States, such a state of
barbarism as has been portrayed by this
woman. And it is beyond comprehension
that men and women of ordinary intelli-gence
should accept, without investigation,
the unsupported statements of an unknown
person in defamation of a large part of one
of the most enlightened and humane
nations of the world.
These would-be philanthropists and
reformers of other people give ready and
unquestioning credence to, and take to
their bosoms, without inquiry as to her
character and history, a woman who
among just and thinking people would
have been at once discredited by her habit of
rabid and rancorous abuse and wholesale
vilification. These guardians of the world's
virtue and goodness offer insult to a whole
people on the mere assertion of a single
person who goes to them unknown and
unaccredited. These dupes of a reckless
slanderer, whom a vile and abusive tongue
have exiled from her former home, swallow
without attempt at verification her
malicious falsehoods and exaggerations,
her monstrous calumnies and, in excess of
virtuous zeal, further outrage a people
thus traduced by presuming to read them
severe and solemn lectures on their obli-gations
to civilization and humanity.
EDITORIAL. 3i3
Agricultural Prosperity in the South.
While from the far West and the North-west
there come lamentable cries of
drouth, renewed crop failure, low prices
for wheat, the staple and almost only crop,
and impoverishment, from every part of
the South we hear of abundant yields of
almost every product that is grown.
Cotton has never promised so well at this
stage. The corn crop is made and is past
any possibility of damage from drouth or
excessive rains. And it promises to be
the greatest aggregate crop the South has
produced since the war. The fruit crop
was largely destroyed by the freeze of
last March, but there have still been
shipments, very considerable in the aggre-gate,
of peaches and pears from some
sections. The yield of grapes has been
fairly good, notwithstanding the freeze,
and high prices have been realized.
Truck farmers have had good crops
and good prices. Millions of dollars
have gone from Northern cities into the
trucking districts. The watermelon crop
of Georgia alone, which it was feared the
freeze had destroyed, has taken from
^500,000 to 1750,000 into that State.
Altogether the farmers and fruit growers
and gardeners of the South have not for
thirty-five years been in so prosperous a
condition as now.
Successful Immigration Work.
As showing what can be accomplished
by well-directed efforts in the way of pro-moting
immigration to the South, the his-tory
of a German colony recently estab-lished
in Dorchester county, Maryland, is
interesting. About a year ago the Rev.
Nicholas Burkart, a German Lutheran
minister of Baltimore, moved by the dis-tressing
condition of some German immi-grants
who had settled in the West, and
who by reason of successive failures of crops
had exhausted their means, undertook to
procure their removal to the Eastern Shore
of Maryland, where, on account of the
conditions of soil and climate and the
greater diversity in products, the farmer's
chances are so much better than in the
West. He bought 1000 acres of land and
settled on it a colony of sixteen families,
(
numbering fifty-eight persons. Of this
1000 acres 400 acres were cleared land,
which was rented to the colonists at $2.00
an acre. The 600 acres of woodland were
sold to the colonists, the purchaser being
given five years to get his land cleared
and in condition for cultivation. At the
end of five years payments are to begin at
the rate of one-fifth of the amount of pur-chase
money each year. The purchaser
must pay the yearly interest on the price
of his property until he pays the purchase
price
Apple, pear and peach orchards have
been planted, and vineyards are under
cultivation.
The 400 acres are cultivated this year in
corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peas and oats,
cabbage, potatoes and other vegetables.
Eight babies have been born to the
colony since it was established, and not a
single death has occurred. There is no
sickness among them. They live in houses
that they have built themselves.
Since the settlement of this pioneer
colony other families from the West have
followed them singly and in small colonies,
and since last September fifty-two German
families, numbering 225 men, women and
children, have made homes for themselves
in that county, and have bought and in part
put under cultivation 6000 acres of land.
All this has been brought about within
one year by one man and with the expen-diture
of a comparatively small amount of
money. The movement thus started will
be carried forward by its own momentum,
and within a few years the waste lands of
Dorchester and adjacent counties will be
occupied by hundreds of industrious,
thrifty, prosperous farmers.
.14 EDITORIAL.
As to the readiness of these Western
farmers to move to the South, Mr. Burkart
said to the writer the other day that the
growth of the movement he had started
was limited only by the meagre amount of
money at his command and the limited
time that his pastoral duties would permit
him to give to it; that while within less
than a year over fifty families had been
brought from the West, and while these
would be followed by others in increasing
numbers, yet with adequate capital to ope-rate
with and with larger attention, the
number already secured could have been
made much larger, and the continued im-migration
could be very greatly accele-rated.
He finds that there is no difficulty
in inducing farmers of the West and
Northwest to move to the South when
they are made to understand the differ-ences
between the two sections.
It ought to be possible for nearly every
county in all the States of the South to
-aise sufficient capital for a local immigra-tion
company. Properly conducted these
could be made enormously profitable, and
would be of incalculable public benefit.
Some idea of the possibilities of such en-terprises
may be had from the history of
this Maryland undertaking.
"A Worthy Publication."
The Southern States, an illustrated
monthly devoted entirely to the South, is
exerting a strong, earnest effort to induce
immigration Southward by filling its pages
with reliable facts and statistics, setting
forth the advantages of the various South-ern
States for profitable investment and
for immigration. This periodical deserves
the patronage and hearty co-operation of
every community interested in the develop-ment
of its section, or the South in
general.—The Journal, Tallapoosa, Ga.
The South in Better Condition than the
Rest of the Country.
The Manufacturers'1 Record has pub-lished
some remarkable statistics in illus-tration
of the better business and financial
condition of the South as compared with
the rest of the country. In the matter of
bank clearings, for instance, the South is
the only section that is making any in-crease.
Taking the week ending July 14,
which was the week immediately preced-ing
the compilation of these statistics, the
increase in the clearings over the preced-ing
week was 7.6 per cent., while in all
other sections there was a falling off of
from 4 to 20 per cent, The following table
makes the comparison graphically:
Per cent.
New York city Decrease . . .20.0
New England " .... 49
Middle States " S.9
Middle Western States " 6.8
Pacific States " ....20.9
Other Western States " 6 6
Southern States Increase. . . . 7.6
Of all the sixteen Southern cities re-ported,
only three do not show an increase.
The News and Courier's Immigration
Policy.
The Charleston News and Courier con-tinues
to be funny. Essaying to reply to
an editorial in the July number of the
Southern States, pointing out the fal-lacy
of its statement that the South "is
not worrying itself about immigration," it
says that if the people of the South are as
widely and thoroughly aroused on the
subject of immigration as is claimed, "the
fact has escaped our attention and their
attention and the public attention."
That this condition may have escaped
the attention of the News and Courier is
not at all unlikely, but if the editor of that
interesting paper will induce its readers to
forego the able and witty editorials with
which he is accustomed to delight them
long enough to enable him to make a tour
of the South, or if, without emerging from
his happy seclusion into contact with the
active, bustling, noisy, busy outer world,
he will even consent to read the news-papers,
he will find that not only has this
fact of general, active interest in immigra-tion
not "escaped the public attention,"
but that it is one of the absorbing and
predominant topics of public interest.
EDITORIAL. 3i5
The News and Courier says further :
"As we have remarked before, the en-thusiasm
of a few boomers here and there
breaks out every spring, and eventuates in
their holding a conference or convention
somewhere and passing resolutions and
appointing committees and riding around
the place of meeting in livery stable car-riages,
four in a carriage, at the expense
of the local "business league," and then
the meeting adjourns and the delegates
return to their homes until the attack
seizes them again. As for the immigra-tion
conventions and associations and all
the rest, we are sure that few people here-abouts,
of any profession or calling or
class, take any stock in them, or expect
any important practical results from them.
We do not, at any rate. They are well
meant, no doubt, but they do not work
well. They have been meeting and "reso-luting"
and whooping up their aims and
plans every year for many years. If any one
of them has brought enough immigrants
into the South to stock one township
—
where are they? According to our infor-mation,
Florida and Texas have been set-tled
mainly by the work of the railroads
and first settlers. No immigration con-cern
can claim the credit for the important
movement of population into either of
those States. And the movement has not
begun in other States. The development
of certain profitable industries in parts of
Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama
and Louisiana has attracted many stran-gers
to those parts. No immigration
agency started the movement in any case,
except in that of the famous boom towns
now collapsed. We venture to say that
one industrious and intelligent railroad
superintendent in Georgia has settled
along the line of his road in that State
more desirable immigrants in the past two
or three years than all the immigration
congresses, conventions, conferences, com-missions,
committees and agencies have
introduced and settled in all the rest of the
South in the thirty years since the war."
What has all that, we would ask, got to
do with the matter at issue ? What is the
News and Courier going on in this way
about ? Who has said anything about immi-gration
conventions? Certainly the South-ern
States is not a champion or an advo-cate
of them. On the contrary, it believes
that they don't amount to a row of pins.
We fear that the editor of the News and
Courier in his manifest indifference to pos-sible
blessings does not read the South-ern
States carefully. In the June num-ber
(and if he has thrown away his copy of
that number we will cheerfully send him
another) he will find an article on one of
these conventions, which may be taken
as a specimen of all that have been held in
the South during the last five or six years.
We reproduce here an extract from that
article:
"Many who are familiar with this Inter-state
Immigration Association and its con-ventions
hoped that this time, inasmuch as
the enterprising and energetic Business
League of Augusta and Senator Patrick
Walsh of Augusta were identified with the
movement, it would amount to something
more than preceding assemblies of the
sort, but no effort of the League or of
Senator Walsh or of the executive officers
availed anything. As before, there were
speeches and resolutions, an Executive
Committee was appointed, and this Execu-tive
Committee went through the form of
electing officers. Some eloquent addresses
were made ; a good deal of time was
wasted in wrangling over the length of
time to be allowed for speeches, the proper
procedure of business and other trifling
matters ; a number of resolutions were
adopted, some good, some meaningless
and badly written, and the convention ad-ourned."
In the same article we pointed out the
contrast between the fruitlessness of these
gatherings and the energy and intelligent
methods and conspicuous success of the
"one industrious and intelligent railroad
superintendent in Georgia," whom the
News and Courier writer evidently had in
mind, and of other notable railroad pro-moters
of immigration. Our criticism of
the News and Courier had no relation to
methods or agencies. We simply showed
that the claims that the South could not be
said to be inviting immigration, and that
the "exceptional and vociferous" persons
who were so clamorously concerning them-selves
about immigration did not represent
the South, were absurdities, in view of the
incontrovertible facts that "nearly every
paper in the South, bankers, lawyers, mer-chants,
railroad officers in every part of the
South, boards of trade, business leagues,
commercial clubs and other like bodies in
nearly all the cities and towns," are discus-sing
ways and devising plans by which the
present immigration movement to the
3i6 EDITORIAL.
South may be accelerated, and that "there
is hardly a daily paper of any prominence
in the whole South that is not earnestly
and persistently urging the value and de-sirability
of a properly guarded immigra-tion."
However, after all, the News and
Courier may be not so far wrong as
would appear from the utterances to which
we took exception. To quote further from
the editorial that has suggested the pres-ent
article
:
"The people and the farmers in this
part of the South * * * are always
glad to have honest and industrious
strangers come among them and settle
among them, as many have done in
the past, but they are not lying awake
at night, or getting up soon in the
morning, or attending meetings to de-vise
means to induce them to come.
They go on the common sense principle
that intelligent people elsewhere know
their own business best, and are willing
for them to change their homes or stay
where they are, as they think best."
The meaning of which doubtless is that
while the News and Courier and its read-ers,
"the people and the farmers in this
part of the South," are not at all indiffer-ent
to immigration, but are glad to extend
hospitalities to "honest and industrious"
immigrants, they are nevertheless in such
a prosperous and happy state that they
don't need to worry about immigration or
anything else. A region blessed with such
prosperity, peace and contentment should
not be ignored by the intending settler
who is investigating the comparative at-tractions
of different localities in the South
and whose attention is likely to be diverted
to those communities which cannot afford
to pursue this Imsserfaire policy, and are
extending eager invitation to the immi-grant
and the investor.
The Southern Exchange Association.
The recently organized Southern Ex-change
Association will undoubtedly be-come
a powerful agent in promoting the
development and general welfare of the
South. It was confidently predicted by
those who were instrumental in bringing
about the New York meeting of Southern
business men and Northern men interested
in the South that some plan would be
evolved by which the whole South could
unite in co-operative effort in behalf of
Southern advancement. The committee
appointed at that meeting to bring into
existence and put into operation such a
plan entered upon its work without delay
and with much energy and zeal. The out-come
of their deliberations and labors is
seen in the comprehensive and remarkably
well-conceived and ably planned organ-ization,
the introductory clauses of whose
articles of association are published on
another page. The readers of the South-ern
States are urged to send for a com-plete
set of the forms issued by the asso-ciation.
Fruit Production in the South.
From a recent bulletin of the Agricul-tural
Department showing the production
of certain fruits in the United States for
the census year 1S89-90, the Southern
States compiles the following table, ex-hibiting
the yield in the South :
Maryland ...
Virginia
North Carolina
South Carolina
Georgia
Florida
Alabama
Mississippi
Louisiana
Texas
Arkansas
Tennessee
West Virginia
Kentucky
Total for whole
country ....
Apples,
bushels.
1,410,413
3,391.425
7, 59i>54i
435.484
2,113.055
2,610
1.238,734
605,36s
117,748
742,993
1,894.346
7,283 945
4,439.978
10,679,389
46,947,029
I43,I05,6S9
Peaches,
bushels.
Pears,
bushels.
S93.019
1,052,000
2,74o,9'5
1,490,633;
5,525,"9.
230,290
2,431,203
i,324 354
310,217
5,106,332
3 001,1251
2,555,099;
376,662
846,13s
1
27,793,106
36,367,747
60,292
5i,553
33,9io
9,244
113,868
34,255
22.902
iS,53i
3,993
17,034
12,923
49.923
15,406
nS,85o
562,716
.064,375
This report shows that the South pro-duced
during the census year nearly one-third
of the apple crop of the country and
three-fourths of the peach crop. Only two
States in the Union, Ohio and Michigan,
EDITORIAL. 3i7
exceeded Kentucky in apple production,
each of these two having raised 13,000,000
bushels. In peaches Georgia led the en-tirej
country, fwith a crop of 5,525,000
bushels, followed by Texas with 5,100,-
000 bushels, Arkansas with 3,000,000
bushels and North Carolina 2,700,000 bush-els.
The active development of the fruit
interests of the South is really just getting
well started. Its progress during the next
few years promises to excite a livelier in-terest
than orange growing in Florida or
fruit culture in California ever attracted.
The Summer Climate of the South.
One of the most deeply imbedded and
most difficult of removal of the many er-roneous
impressions concerning the South
is the idea that it is a region of equatorial
heat. There has hardly been an issue of
the Southern States that has not con-tained
facts and statistics showing that
not only is it no hotter in the Southern
than in most of the Northern States, but
that as to even the Gulf States the heat of
summer is not so oppressive and unbear-able
as in the North, and that the hot,
sultry nights of Northern latitudes are al-most
unknown in that section. Of course,
the summers are much longer. Winter
tourists who find it getting warm in March
and April and return to their homes in the
North to find that fires and winter clothing
have not yet been dispensed with, imagine
that the relative difference in temperature
then prevailing lasts along through the
season and that as midsummer with its
intense heat approaches, it is all the time
growing proportionately hotter in the
South. This is a fallacy that is being
gradually dissipated. Northern people
who are obliged by business or other causes
to go into the far South in July and August
are surprised to find that they suffer less
discomfort from the heat than they had in
the North, and persons who go from the
South to the North find that, except in
the mountains or at the seashore, the heat
is more excessive and oppressive than at
their homes. And the same comparison
may be made as to the seashore and the
mountain localities of the South and those
of the North. The difference is that sum-mer
commences earlier and continues later
in the South than in the North.
The Southern States and Manufac-turers'
Record have done much to correct
this mistaken belief concerning the South
that was almost universally prevalent, and
the recent action of the Southern Passen-ger
Association, in keeping its excursion
rates for homeseekers in effect through
the summer, will accomplish much good
in this direction. Every visitor to the
South in July and August will go back
home a missionary of the Southern climate.
On another page of this issue we pub-lish
from advance sheets part of an article
on this subject to appear in the Emigrant,
a New York journal that has been instru-mental
in directing German immigration
into the Northwest. Comparisons favor-able
to the South as against the Northwest
are made between the climatology of the
Southern States and that of Germany,
Austria, Hungary, Bohemia and Switzer-land.
This advocacy of the South from
this source is particularly noteworthy as
showing thaj the agencies and instrumen-talities
through which the current of foreign
immigration has been made to flow to the
Northwest are beginning to turn their
attention to the South.
Col. D. B. Dyer, who writes in this
issue of "Southern Development," was
for many years a notable figure in the
West. He has been in every part of the
West and Northwest, and has been identi-fied
with many large development opera-tions
in those sections. He was one of
that memorable body of 60,000 who crossed
the line into Oklahoma the day that terri-tory
was opened to the public, and he was
318 EDITORIAL,
the first mayor of Oklahoma's first town,
Guthrie. He is, therefore, well qualified
to speak of the South as compared with
the West, and all that he says in favor of
the former is emphasized by the fact that
with his thorough knowledge of the two
sections he has withdrawn from the West
and is devoting his energies to business
undertakings in the South.
Elsewhere in this issue will be found a
letter on the Wells crusade in England,
from an English gentleman who has spent
several years in the South, and who being
a man of unusual intelligence and clear-headedness,
a close observer of men and
things, and a careful student of social and
sociological conditions, is well qualified to
discuss the subject on which he writes.
The Piedmont section of Virginia, and
notably Albemarle and adjacent counties,
is conspicuous for each of several desir-able
features, fertility of soil, diversity of
products, delightful climate the year
round, picturesque scenery and the intelli-gence
and high intellectual and social
status of its people ; that is, not only does
this combination of attractions exist, but
each in a pronounced and unusual degree.
In this area a very advanced and prosper-ous
state of agriculture and horticulture has
been reached. Within the last few years a
very considerable number of high-class,
well-to-do English farmers have bought
estates in Albemarle county. Mr. James
Blakey, of Charlottesville, makes in this
issue an entertaining, and a conservative
and accurate, presentation of the fruit-growing
industry of this section.
Hon. Daniel Needham, of Boston,
president of the New England Agri-cultural
Society, has in this issue an in-teresting
account of two visits he has
made to the South, one last December
and the other twenty years ago. Par-ticularly
noteworthy is the recital of the
enormously increased value of certain
timber lands which on his first visit he
came down to inspect and declined to buy.
His experience in this regard may be a
valuable lesson to investors. Almost any
undeveloped property anywhere in the
South, timber, mineral or agricultural,
may be bought at such prices as now pre-vail,
with the certainty of large and early
profits.
Immigration News.
The South vs. "The Great Northwest."
The following extracts are from an
article to be published by "The Emigrant,"
a German immigration journal published
in New York, in its August 20th issue, on
the advantages of the South over the
Northwest for agriculturists :
It is a fact palpable to the most cursory
observer that in the matter of securing
immigration the South has not kept pace
with sections of the country less desirable
in every way for agricultural pursuits. * * *
From out of the "Great Northwest"
have come alluring tales to immigrants
of great fortunes to be made in the rais-ing
of stock and the production of cereals.
Never is a word said as to climatic con-ditions.
It is enough for the emigrant to know
that success has been achieved in the cul-ture
of wheat and the raising of stock, by
what means and by whom are matters upon
which the exploiters of Northwestern
farming lands are discreetly silent. He
is led to infer that a country so rich in
agricultural resources must of necessity
possess all of the climatic influences
favorable to a residence there.
Did he but use enough forethought to
investigate for himself he would find that
he was leaving a country with equable
variation in temperature for one possess-ing
great extremes of heat and cold.
Did he leave those parts of Germany
in the vicinity of Munich, Ansbach, Bam-berg,
Breslau or Frederichshafen; with
St. Paul, Minn., Moorhead, Minn., or
Huron, Dakota, as his objective point, he
would be called upon to relinquish a mean
temperature in January of from 36.
3
Fah.,
to 38. o° Fah., for one ranging from 14 3 to
4.6 , a variation of from 40 to 50 . And
in summer he would find the land of his
adoption fully as warm as that from which
he emigrated.
If he came from the vicinity of Leipsic,
Berlin, Cassel, Madgdeburg, Hamburg,
Carlsruhe, or Frankfort-on-the-Main, a
still further variation of io° would result.
Contrast this with almost any point
within the Southern belt and witness the
marked difference in the range of tem-perature
and the wonderfully close relation
between its meteorological conditions and
those of the country from whence he came.
Reference to the International Meteoro-logical
Observation Charts reveals the
fact that the cities of Atlanta, Georgia;
Montgomery, Alabama; Little Rock,
Arkansas; Shreveport, Louisiana; Norfolk,
Virginia; and Abilene, Texas; have about
the same mean temperature as the cities
of Memel, Munich, Ansbach, Breslau,
Bamberg, Frederichshafen and Wustrow
in Germany, while Savannah, Georgia;
Jacksonville, Florida; Mobile, Alabama;
Galveston, Texas, etc., have practically
the mean temperature of Leipsic, Berlin,
Kiel, Cassel, Magdeburg, Hamburg,
Carlsruhe and Frankfort-on-the-Main.
Such variations as occur tend for the
most part toward even more equable
temperature than that found in the vicinity
of the German cities mentioned. Thus
in the spring and fall the temperature,
while not reaching the sultry point, pro-vides
for genial warmth against colder
conditions abroad.
The summer in the South, long held up
as a menace to the physical comfort of
man, loses its formidable aspect when
viewed in the calm light of scientific
research.
Thus the city of Mobile, Alabama, the
most southerly city in the State, enjoyed a
mean temperature through the month of
July of but76°, while simultaneous obser-vations
at Berlin recorded 77. 2°.
At Atlanta, Georgia, the mean tempera-ture
for July was 72. 6°, while eight signal
stations in Germany recorded a much
higher temperature for the corresponding
period.
From this it will be readily perceived
320 IMMIGRATION NEWS.
that the South possesses climatic advan-tages
to German immigrants unequalled
by any other section of the United States,
and as for its soil we need but repeat the
old saying "tickle it with a hoe and it will
smile with a harvest."
Vegetation there is spontaneous and
luxuriant, offering no comparison with that
of the Northwest which requires the aid
of expensive machinery and multitudinous
hands to bring it to a successful state of
cultivation.
And right here we may say that this
matter of the employment of machinery and
farm hands is the rock upon which our
misinformed friends from abroad have
split.
The work of the "Bonanza Farmer" in
the Northwest has been held up to dazzle
the eyes of immigrants who have been led
to believe that it is simply the exemplifi-cation
of what may be accomplished by
any industrious settler. Let us look into
the real facts of the case.
The "Bonanza Farmer" is a creation of
the nineteenth century and unknown to
the verdant foreigner nor indeed to any
other section of the country than the
much lauded Northwest. He is a man of
wonderful resources. In most cases he
has not risen from humble origin, but with
ample capital at his command has invested
largely in farming lands, live stock and
agricultural implements. So extensive a
scale is that upon which he operates that
the human eye cannot encompass the
extent of his holdings. His cattle are
numbered by the thousands; he has his
own elevators in which to store his grain;
he houses his employees in a huge board-ing
house of his own erection; it is the
vast array of harvesting machines upon
his place that the prospective settler sees
in pictures of farming scenes in the North-west.
Operating on so extensive a scale
his losses as the result of untoward con-ditions
are reduced to the minimum. A
profit so small as to prove ruinous to the
average farmer will net him large returns
on his entire crop. The prolific resources
of the "Great Northwest" can therefore
be said to be out of the reach of the immi-grant
of ordinary means. It is essentially
a region of "magnificent distances" and
everything is done upon a grand scale,
reducing the chances of the ordinary
plodder to the minimum and leaving him
no compensation for the many sacrifices
he has been called upon to make of
agreeable social life, educational facilities
and physical comfort.
Contrast his condition with that of the
"truck farmer" of the South who realizes
a greater profit from his thirty acres
than does the Northern farmer from 160.
This sounds almost incredible, but it is a
fact.
There is no section in America today
that gives as full returns to the acre as do
the States of Alabama, Georgia, Florida,
Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, Maryland,
Mississippi, Kentuckey, Tennessee, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri and
West Virginia. The soil and climate unite
to give these States unsurpassed adoption
and capacity for the production of
agriculture.
Tobacco, cotton, sugar, Indian corn,
wheat, rye, barley and oats—all the cereals
are grown here in profuse abundance.
Nowhere in the world does the earth yield
a more prompt, certain and abundant re-turn
to the vitalizing touch of the husband-man
than in these commonwealths.
Much may be said likewise of horticul-ture.
Nowhere can richer or sweeter fruits
such as oranges, bananas, apples, peach-es,
plums, grapes and berries be grown in
greater profusion.
Already are to be found here very many
of the most extensive and profitable or-chards,
vineyards and gardens of the
globe, while marvellous, but well authen-ticated
stories are told of success with
"trucking," otherwise known as raising
vegetables for the market.
With all of the turbulent conditions en-compassing
this section removed ; with a
climate so varied that the immigrant can
select a location with a temperature such
as he has been accustomed to in the land
of his nativity ; with a class of citizens re-nowned
for their warm-hearted hospitality,
holding forth the hand of welcome, and
encouraging by example habits of thrift,
industry and enterprise, no further argu-ment
is needed to induce the immigrant
from abroad or from the frozen North to
make this section his permanent abiding
place, where he can live in amity and
peace without regard to his religion, his
politics or his nativity.
IMMIGRATION NEWS. 321
Colonel Atmore on Immigration.
Colonel C. P. Atmore, general passenger
agent of the Louisville & Nashville Rail-road,
in a recent letter to the Board of
Trade of Louisville, Ky., said :
"The intelligent farmer of the North
and Northwest finds on comparison that
the South, with its boundless resources,
offers a higher percentage in return for
intelligent exertion than the North, and
the cultivation of the soil in a country that
has been for years the recipient of the
overflow of the bone and sinew of the
Middle and Eastern States is found to be
by no means as profitable as that of our
Southern land. The farmer in the North
finds that a very large percentage of his
product is necessary for the maintenance
of his stock during the long and severe
winter, whereas, in a more genial cli-mate
this becomes in a manner unneces-sary.
He also finds that the climate and
soil of Kentucky and other Southern
States admit of the cultivation of a greater
variety of crops than is possible in his
more Northern home; that, in a word,
agricultural pursuits are more profitable
in the South than in the North, and, look-ing
at the situation from a purely selfish
motive, we find there are thousands of
well-to-do farmers in the extreme North
and Northwest who are desirous of chang-ing
their locality and escaping the rigors
of the Northern winter and its short sum-mer
by moving to a more desirable climate.
Mr. J. C. Ackerly, Jacksonville, Florida,
the passenger agent of the Jacksonville,
Tampa and Key West Railway, is com-piling
a list of all lands for sale along his
road with prices, description, &c, in order
to be prepared to answer satisfactorily the
letters of inquiry he is getting from the
North.
Mr. C. W. McGinnis, an immigration
commissioner of the Il