The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1880-06-02
their first choice is out of the way. 1t
is not possible that more than an organi-
cation will be effected to-day. L.
THE SOUTHERN EMPIRE STATE.

THE SOUTHERN EMPIRE STATE.
To the extension of her admirable rail-
road system throughout the State, Geor-
gia more perhaps than to any other one
thing owes the remarkable advance in
material prosperity that has given her
the title which she enjoys pre-eminently
of being the Empire State of the South.
With agricultural and mineral resources
of unsurpassed richness, with forests
of magnificent timber, Georgia saw her
millions of acres of fertile territory
uninhabited, unimproved, and practi-
cally inaccessible for more than CEN
tury, and so it must have continued for
another hundred years but for the en-
ergy Of a few of her public men who
pushed the building of these iron arteries
to every corner of the State. The tim
Der wealth of Southern and Southwest
ern Georgia were thus rendered attain
able to the demands of commerce,
the cotton from the fertile belt of
Central Georgia was made marketable at
the plantation instead of being hauled
by wagons to the sea and river ports,
while the priceless minerals of Upper
Georgia and the products of the count
less acres of excellent agricultural lands
were afforded ready and certain market
at home. Towns sprang up throughout
the State, mills for manufacturing
her timber into lumber and her
cotton into fabrics multiplied and fur
naces for smelling her iron ore begun to
smoke, while manufactures of various
kinds demanded by growing popula-
ton were established in every portion Of
the State. In sixteen years Atlanta
with a population of more than forty
five thousand souls has risen into being,
the mart of busy, wealthy and enter
prising people, and the emporium of
the productive belt of fertile cotton
land that stretches from South Carolina
to the Mississippi River, and where some
of the most sagacious and enterprising
merchants and business men in all the
South reside. Georgia has agricultural
and mineral resources the most varied
and valuable of any State in the Union
and the prosperity of her people is at
this moment more general than in any
other of the United States. Her cotton
product of the past year exceeded proba-
bly, $25,0OO,O and the area planted the
present year will doubtless be from ten
to ffteen.per cent. in excess of the last
harvests. One cotton mill in the State
employs eighteen hundred operatives and
manufactures over one hundred varie-
ties of goods, paying out for wages to its
workmen $600,0O0 per annum, and no
where in the United States have better
dividends been declared than in the
Georgia cotton mills. Four million dol
lars are expended annually for COM
mercial fertilizers by the planters
of Georgia and the area of cotton plant
ing has been extended over very much
greater scope of territory within the
State than was thought profitable or pos
sible in former years.
1t will thus appear what advantages to
Cincinnati the extension of our Southern
Railroad to Chattanooga and its connec-
tions there with the railroad system ex-
tending to the towns and cities of Geor-
gia must inevitably bring to us and how
desirable it is to draw into closer fellow
ship the people and business of State
so enterprising and that are thus march
ing on to future of such unparalleled
prosperity and greatness.