Part 3

These settlers can truly be regarded as to the advance guard of a race movement that will eventually make of Southern Alabama, Southern Mississippi and a portion of Western Florida an American Italy. The coming of Italians to Alabama can no longer be considered as an experiment. As has been previously stated, the settlement in Baldwin county was made some six or eight years ago. These people can live on less than either Americans or negroes, for they have been accustomed to the strictest economy at home. The great fault of the colored race, and to a large extend of their white employers in the South, is wastefulness. When negroes can make a living on land in the section of country under consideration, Italians will surely be able to do so. They have the utmost confidence in their ability to do so. The negro is not satisfied unless he has meat to eat every day in the year. The workers on farms and in orchards and vineyards in Italy are accustomed to live on bread, fruit and vegetables for weeks at a time. Their repasts often consist of a piece of bread and a bunch of grapes, or a piece of bread and an onion.

That this class of immigrants will greatly benefit the section to which it has been attracted, to use a Gallicism, goes without saying. They will make good citizens, for they would not seek rural life if they were the adherents of any special political propaganda. Experience has fully demonstrated the fact that all foreigners holding extreme opinions in regard to government and social order that come to this country, Russian Nihilists, German Socialists, French Anarchists, Irish Dynamiters, and Italian Red Republicans, make their homes in cities, and generally in large ones. The quiet of country life is distasteful to them. They must live in the midst of agitation and turmoil, and constantly attend gatherings where they deliver or listen to incendiary or socialistic harangues, or existence becomes almost unendurable to them. These settlers in South Alabama, on the contrary, are well satisfied with the institutions of the country to which they have come in search of homes, appreciate the safety and security that are caused by the supremacy of law and order, and look forward to prosperous and happy lives in a land where war is unknown, where the balance of power does not trouble the souls of statesmen, and where no immense armaments are maintained by imposing heavy and grievous burdens on the people. They have come to stay, and many will follow in their footsteps. The region to which they have betaken themselves has for years been a market garden for the West. It will now also become an orchard and a vineyard. We are living in an age of progress, and wonderful changes and developments are ahead of us.

LETTERS FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN FARMERS, GIVING THEIR EXPERIENCE IN THE SOUTH--VI.

[The letters published in this issue form the sixth instalment in the series commenced in the October number of this magazine. 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 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.]

Fruit-Growing in Middle Georgia.

CHARLES T. SMITH, Concord, Ga.--Concord is located in the fruit belt of Middle Georgia. The country is slightly rolling and well watered. The soil is productive and can easily be brought to a very high state of fertility. For years cotton has been the staple crop, but King Cotton has a powerful rival now in peaches and grapes. Fruit-growing was introduced into Middle Georgia about twelve years ago. The first plantings were small and there were many scoffers. The industry proved to be very remunerative, and each year showed an increased acreage until fruit farms of 100 to 500 acres are now not uncommon, and hundreds of carloads of grapes and peaches are shipped annually and are known far and wide for their superior quality. Georgia grapes and peaches bring a higher price in all the leading markets than the same fruits from any other State in the Union, and with each season their popularity is increased.

The future outlook is very encouraging. The prices to be obtained now are not so large as heretofore, but with increased production came better methods of growing and hauling and better shipping facilities, and the profits to be derived are much the same, and far more satisfactory than any other crops that can be grown. This industry has been largely fostered by Northern men, who have always been with the foremost in progress. Their efforts have been crowned with success, and they may now look with pleasure not only on the handsome properties they have amassed but also on this splendid new industry in the development of which they have been pioneers.

A Northern Man’s Observation of Southern People.

L. S. PACKARD, Pine Bluff, Moore county, N. C., formerly of Warrensburg, N. Y.--Few persons realize from passing through the South what the soil is capable of producing under careful cultivation. After a stay of several years among Southern people I have learned much about them and their modes of work, the care the lands ought to have and the yields that can be expected under good cultivation. I give in brief my observations:

Southern men and women are justly entitled to the credit they get for being the most hospitable people in the United States. The majority of them live easy, enjoy life and are contented to go forward in the quiet ways of their fathers. Some, however, are branching out, learning to make money and are accumulating fortunes on the farms and in the factories. It is the general belief of the Northern people that Southern people cannot succeed.

To show an instance where a Southern born man has succeeded I shall confine my article to one man and to one farm, and in my future letters give the names of Northern men who have come South. Within a mile of the Seaboard Air Line in the county of Clark and State of Georgia, Mr. John Smith has a farm of several hundred acres. He started with small means but has improved, buying more land and stock, building larger barns and better houses each year until he has one of the finest and best equipped and regulated farms in the United States. His grain, clover and grass fields are as fine as any in Pennsylvania or New York. His stock is well kept and creditable in number and quality; they will compare favorably with the best in Ohio, Michigan or any part of the Northwest. His cotton fields are beautiful beyond description. He has every convenience in the way of modern machinery. He has built and equipped a railroad from his farm to Athens, Ga., and has erected a cottonseed oil mill, fertilizer factory and conducts a general mercantile business to supply tenants and employees.

Mr. Smith’s farming operations were enough to convince me that all the soil needed was careful cultivation and constant attention to yield three times the profit of any in the Northern or New England States.

Recently I met Mr. J. T. Patrick, of Southern Pines, N. C., who is a noted worker for Southern development and perhaps one of the best posted men in the South in regard to the developments going on in that section. I spoke to him about Mr. Smith. Mr. Patrick said: “I have seen his farm and it is a credit to Mr. Smith and the South, but there are many more Southerners who are doing as well as he, but I suppose you have not seen their farms. Major R. S. Tucker, of Wake county, Dr. W. R. Capehart, of Bertie county, and thousands of others scattered over the South are owners and managers of as fine farms as you can find in any part of the United States. You Northern people do not get out from the line of railroad to see what our people are doing, and we are generally judged, condemned and sentenced by people who ride through our country at the rate of forty miles an hour on a Pullman palace car and don’t know the difference between a cotton plant and a stalk of buckwheat.”

There is a great deal of truth in what Mr. Patrick said. Northern men who come South to learn ought to come down prepared to stay long enough to go into the country and see the farms and not judge the South from a poorly conducted farm, but from those managed with intelligence.

Political Opinions Not Counted.

JAMES M. DICKEY, Superintendent National Cemetery, Corinth, Miss.--In 1881 I was a resident of Lamed-Pawnee county, Kansas. From March 1, 1882, to March, 1884, was stationed at Barrancas, Fla., near Pensacola. From April, 1884, to the present time have been a resident of Corinth, Miss.

My observations during this time have been somewhat limited, but in the material progress the agricultural classes have made considerable advance. The old-time theory that cotton was the only crop to be raised with profit has been discarded. Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, grapes, fruits, etc., and nearly all classes of products that the truck gardener can raise will find remunerative sale. Climate and healthfulness are exceptionally good. I have not been under the care of a physician during the period of nine years.

Churches are Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Christian. Schools of Corinth are public, graded into primary, intermediate, grammar and high school. Seven months, with two months additional of pay school, to such patrons as may elect to send.

The one great and all important question that has been asked of me by visitors to this place is: “How do the people treat you? Are you ostracized from society?” etc. My answer has been, and I have no reason to change it, that a person’s habits and deportment are his or her passport or entree to society. It makes no difference in North Mississippi whether a person came from Georgia or Michigan; the social reception is the same.

The political liberality of the citizens is as good as anywhere. While having their own honest convictions, they respect the convictions of others. My political views are in a minority, but during all this time no one has questioned or impugned my motives or convictions or hindered the rights of suffrage.

Middle Georgia as Compared with the North and West.

G. N. BARKER, Longstreet, Ga.--As one who has been a resident two years in Middle Georgia after ten years residence in the West and Northwest, occupied in stock raising, etc., I may be able to point out a few advantages and differences relative to these parts. What will strike the farmer most on arriving in this section is the total absence of grass meadows or any visible facilities for the pasturing of stock, but curiously enough, an abundance of fairly nutritious hay may be cut during summer, of sufficient nutritive value with the assistance of a little grain for stock. The corn crop is light per acre to one used to the West; oats, however, yield well when well cultivated, and are off the ground in May, the same ground making also a good hay crop the same year. Bermuda grass makes an inexhaustible supply of pasture for all stock, except three winter months when green rye, barley or oats will take its place. Italian rye grass I have found grows luxuriantly during winter and spring, and it makes more milk than almost any herb. Red top grass also succeeds well. During summer there is an abundance of forage crops for all classes of stock, and of good nutritious quality. Stock is healthy here, provided it is kept clean and not overfed with too highly fattening foodstuffs. My health has vastly improved in this climate and I have recovered from the exposures of the Northwest. The land here is poor and run down, but good cultivation and moderate manuring soon restore a fertility that is astonishing to anyone seeing only what is done without fertilizer. The greatest drawbacks in this section are the total inability of the laborer, merchant and business man to comprehend or encourage anything but cotton. All kinds of fruits flourish with good care bestowed upon them.

Farmers coming from other parts will have to either do or closely superintend the minute details of their business; nothing can be left to the colored labor and they have not yet had any practice with the better methods or implements. Lumber is cheap; also carpenters very; to one accustomed to Western prices, so many comforts may be had unattainable out there. The heat is no drawback, not being anything like the maximum attained in North Dakota and Montana, but the summer is long and debilitating to the newcomer, who must use discretion in taking too much sun the first season. Good foundation stock of all kinds can be bought here at moderate prices. Living is very cheap and work not hard, if cotton is let alone, as there is more time all-the-year-round to work than in colder regions. Roads are moderate and railroads numerous, obviating the distances to be traveled out West to and from one’s station and postoffice. As a place of residence for comfort, absence of great atmospheric changes, cheapness of living and land, and other things necessary to the comfort of a farmer, I consider the South has many and varied advantages over the North and West.

From New Hampshire to North Carolina.

R. M. COUCH, Southern Pines, N. C.--The statement of facts I shall make in this letter will lean to the conservative in all cases, as after a residence of eight years and an extensive correspondence with inquirers after facts, I have learned that the truth is good enough and exaggeration folly. By the advice of my physician I left New Hampshire and located here, and have not been North even on a visit since, and as the climate was the first consideration with me, let me say unqualifiedly that I believe it as near perfect all the year round as can be found in any part of the world. I am confirmed in this conclusion by the testimony of scores who have sought this haven of health after trying such places as Colorado, California, New Mexico, Arizona, and even the South of France and Italy. The healthfulness of this section being established, the next question which confronted me was the means of support, and as we make no claim that this soil (a light sandy loam) is adapted to general farming, we were compelled to look to the fruit industry as the most likely to help us out, and well are we repaid for the venture. It is proved that a dry atmosphere and porous soil produces very fine flavored fruit and that in this climate, also, the fruit “colors” up better and makes a much better appearance than that grown in a colder and less sunny climate. But one strong hold on the fruit industry lies in our geographical position as regards the ripening season, which brings our fruit into market, out of competition with any other section. This fact was proved by our shipments last season.

Within five years there have been planted in this immediate section 1500 acres in fruit, and in order that your readers may have the advantage of direct correspondence with any or all the growers of fruit, I will give the names from memory: C. J. Eaglesfield was the pioneer on a small scale; S. N. Whipple, extensive peach, plum, grape and nut farm; Van Lindly Orchard Co., 350 acres peach, pear, plum and blackberry; Niagara Grape Co., 107 acres in grapes; Southern Pines Fruit-Growing Co., eighty acres in grapes; Benjamin Douglas, Jr., of Orange, N. J.; Tarbell & Carlton, H. P. Bilyeu, Dr. C. W. Weaver, C. D. Tarbell, Thomas Carlton, Fred Oberhouserheur, James H. Murray, S. W. Thomas, Charles H. Thompson, Edwin Newton, Doctors Boynton, Stevens and R. M. Couch, Rev. A. A. Newhall, B. Van Herff, J. T. Wilson, Dr. W. P. Swett, H. P. Stebbins, J. A. Morriss, R. S. Marks, L. S. Johnson, C. C. Mitchell, John Huttonhomer, F. J. Folley, Rev. J. W. Johnston, Mrs. L. A. Raymond, Mrs. Louisa Young, P. Pond, Fred Dixon and others. There were shipped from this point last season 150 tons, being the first bearing year of the oldest vineyards of much size. The bearing vineyards and orchards the coming season will more than double the shipments, and in two years all the vineyard trees mentioned will come to bearing.

The prices in Washington and New York last July were six and seven cents per pound for black grapes, and thirteen and fourteen cents per pound for Delaware and Niagara, and $3.50 to $4.50 per bushel crate for peaches and plums. The demand was as good at the close of the season as at first. Write to Dr. C. W. Weaver, S. N. Whipple, H. P. Bilyeu, C. D. Tarbell, C. B. Mabore for prices obtained for their own shipments. Dr. Weaver realized from three acres of his best Delaware grapes $150 per acre net.

I have thus, in a rambling way, given your readers an idea of the climate and agricultural resources of the sand hills of Moore county, N. C.

Southern Pines is a town eight years old, in the midst of the turpentine region of North Carolina, sixty-eight miles southwest from Raleigh, on the Raleigh & Augusta Railroad (part of the Seaboard Air Line), fifteen hours from New York, and is six hundred feet above sea level, the highest point in the whole turpentine belt. The soil is a sandy loam and has a perfect drainage. Malaria is unknown. The presence of the long-leafed pine in large quantities causes the generation of ozone to such a degree as to make this locality almost a specific for throat and lung difficulties. Many physicians and a large number of the cured and benefited testify to its wonderful effects. The town is filled mainly with Northern people, and has four hotels, a good school, and church services every Sabbath. There are three stores, and railroad, telegraph and express offices. There are many fine residences and a large hotel 300 feet long and four stories is being built with modern improvements.

Fruit-Growing in Texas.

R. T. WHEELER, Hitchcock, Galveston county, Texas.--I have examined and am very much pleased with your magazine, and particularly the department of agricultural correspondence. This is an exceedingly interesting and important feature, well calculated to accomplish much in the settlement and development of the South. Your journal has a high mission and is on the right road.

Unlike most of your correspondents I am a native of this State, and a lifetime resident of this section, and therefore naturally biased in favor of this country, climate and people, free, however, from any prejudice against any other portion of the country. While I am not in the strict sense a farmer, and have no skilled acquaintance with any branch of horticulture or agriculture, I have had ten years’ practical acquaintance with the cultivation of this soil, and my ten years’ residence at this station, fourteen miles from Galveston City, has given me the opportunity of observing its rapid progress and development within the past five or six years, from a purely stock country, a naked prairie, in which lands were worth not exceeding fifty cents per acre, devoted exclusively to raising ordinary Texas cattle, it requiring at a low estimate ten acres to support one cow of the value of about $6, to a prosperous and independent fruit and truck farming community, having over 150,000 pear trees set to orchard, over 100 acres in strawberries now ripening and ready for market, yielding from $300 to $600 per acre; some 300 acres more in cultivation in general vegetables, a church, good public schools, with an average attendance of over fifty scholars daily, good stores, about twenty artesian wells flowing good, pure, wholesome water in the greatest abundance, from a depth of about 600 feet, nurseries and rose gardens with several hundred varieties of roses now in full bloom in the open air, without a poor man or woman, and not one that is not making a good living, a community whose reputation is co-extensive with horticulture within the States and Canada, whose products are well-known in Chicago and other markets, and whose strawberries have sold as far West as Salt Lake City.

Very much of the wonderful development of this country is due Col. H. M. Stringfellow, who some nine years since introduced the Le Conte and Kiefer pears, and whose orchard, in the language of an ex-governor of Texas, is “simply a world-beater.” Last year, as we all know, was both a drouth and a panic year, and yet on his thirteen-acre orchard Mr. Stringfellow cleared considerably over $5000 on pear fruit alone, and much more on the sale of rooted pear cuttings, these pears being propagated by cuttings. I could write a book about this country and then be in the same trouble as the Queen of Sheba, but I fear that this letter is beyond reasonable length. Notwithstanding this extraordinary development, lands are still comparatively cheap; the best can be had from $20 to $50 per acre.

An Opinion of Arkansas After Three Years’ Trial.

J. M. SOWLE, Dryden, Ark.--I came here from Michigan in June, 1890. Located at a place now called Dryden, just west of Gilkerson on the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, with seventeen families and a few single men; seventy in all. The B. & S. W. Railroad now runs through our town.

Two families returned to stay; three more got lonesome here in the woods and went back expecting to stay, and before they were back two months acknowledged that they were homesick to come back and did come back, as they liked the society here, as well as the fine weather and good health. Everyone here now are here to stay, and most of them have bought land.

We have such nice warm sunshine and weather in the winter. Health best of any place we were ever located. Out of the seventy people in the three years and eight months, have had eight persons sick enough to go to bed. One two-year-old girl died; another three-months-old babe died; she was well at midnight, found dead in bed in the morning; and one woman fifty years old died with consumption, think hereditary, as her father, mother and five brothers and sisters died with the same disease. The three who died are counted in the eight sick, except the babe.

The soil here is good and never fails to raise crops on account of drouth or any other cause. We have raised fifty bushels shelled corn to the acre on our poorest land, and a bushel of potatoes to twenty-four hills, and in fact nearly all kind of crops are extra good. The county is naturally suited to peaches, plums and grapes. General good crops are corn, cotton, wheat, oats, timothy, clover, red top, blue grass, blackberries, raspberries, apples, pears and quince.

Society is good; more church members in proportion to population than any place I ever was in. Laws are enforced here better than any place I ever lived.

This county is a peaceful and safe county to live in, as we have the best of accommodating neighbors, as well as law-abiding citizens.

A General Answer to Many Letters of Inquiry.

A. K. FISHER, Abbeville, Ga.--My letter published some time ago in your magazine brought me so many letters of inquiry concerning this section, our mode of farming, cost of getting land ready for cultivation, etc., that it required a long letter to each, and I have been unable to comply. I write this letter now to cover all the ground of inquiries.

Abbeville has about 2000 inhabitants, is county seat of Wilcox county, Ga., is on the Savannah, Americus & Montgomery Railroad, sixty-five miles east of Americus, where the railroad crosses the Ocmulgee river. This river is navigable; Brunswick is near its mouth.

Abbeville has two churches--Methodist and Baptist; Presbyterians also have service there. Schools generally are not as good as in most of Northern States, but are gradually improving; have some teachers from the North.