Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1885-06-19
FRIDAY MORNING. JUNE. 10. 1885
BET TER HOMES FOR LESS
MDMEY

One trouble, and one it is not too late
to correct in the United States, is that our
civilization took too rapid strides West
ward. It has taken three straight roads
across the continent, Canada, the Union
Pacific and Southern Pacific, and left i'm
mense bands of territory between its
lines of march untouched. 1t is the law
of nature that it must come back and 20
over its work, settle up the unoccupied
fields it never saw before and commence
afresh. The bounding strides of youth must
be retraced by middle age, and the coun-
try, in the real meaning of the words, built
up. Dense populations have been projec-
ted from the Atlantic coast into the far
West as from catapult; populations that
could hardly be said to be familiar with the
States from which they came. Emil
grant parties, many of them from Vir
ginia. have landed in the West, scores of
whose members had never been fifty miles
from the homes they left. Possibilities Of
which they all knew nothing were in a
days ride of their old homes. Even in
the little space of their home district that
they had left, miles of fertile land un-
rolled its acres; but unfortunately to eyes
that were looking beyond them.
This civilization that is coming back to
go over its work again finds an opportune
field; one that it never saw before. Since
it went West. a new country, the South,
has been priced open by political and
social revolution and the fence let down
to the world. 1t is Central Flowery
Kingdom which for century was walled
against the world. It was to visit part of
this kingdom that party of genial Wes-
tern explorers were brought to Staunton
last week. They were an exceptionally
well informed body of men from Iowa,
being party of two hundred journalists
from that State, and it was their and our
good fortune that they met here an excep-
tionally well informed Virginian, Major
Jed Hotchkiss. What he said to them in
his brief address on Sears Hill was worth
remembering. Not half mile from
where he was addressing them lay farm.
just purchased by Mr.. M. Erskine Miller
for sos an acre, which would have given
the Iowa men practical idea of what ad-
vantages Virginia can offer the emigrant
In their own State farm its equal in soil,
lay Of land. and proximity to railroad and
local markets, could not be purchased at
less than one hundred fifty dollars an acre.
That is specimen of what we in Virgin
ia mean when we say that we offer the
cheapest land in the Union for sale. There
is land in the far West at So per acre
That IS true; that is to say it is true as to
the first instalment, but it is hard to est-
mate how much more the man pays than
So before he gets home. He pays, the
best years of his life liz waiting, the hard
labor of himself and family for years; be
pays years of waiting before the railroads,
schools and churches get to HMM short
he pays $3.50 and interest, an acre for his
So farm before he gets through. Take
the Atlantic coast States as the competi-
tors of Virginia say Pennsylvania. Lay
string down on the map at Germantown
in that State, edge it five miles away from
the town and it rests on farms assessed
at $500 an acre!! Come on down the
string, two hundred miles. into Virginia,
straight along, the same formation, the
same land, on the same railroad on which
you started from Germantown, and you
can get precisely the same farm for from
SIS to $25 an acre
What Virginia is ready for, what she
has set her house in order for, both by the
conservative disposition of her people and
by the internal improvements she has been
struggling in recent years to complete, is
emigration from other States. We have
been forced. for many reasons, to despair
of intercepting the stream of foreign EN-
igration that flows through the Union
North of us. Civilization costs money,
and that immigration not having the
money to pay for what of it they find on
the Atlantic coast, must 60 to the cheap
lands aud unsettled social status of the
country on the Pacific slope. There they
get just what they pay for, the land to dig,
the bread to eat, the roof to shelter and
their clothing. Their children may grow
to something better. Here in Virginia we
offer better civilization, the land Is more
than So, but it is hardly a fifth of the price
for which the same land with the same
surroundings can be bought in those Wes-
tern States that have been settled up. 1t
is this land to which Virginia invites
those citizens from other States who are
coming back on the reflux to do the work
of settling up the country more closely
and thoroughly. They will find in Vir-
glnia peaceful population, with uncul-
tivated land enough to locate tolerably
good sized nation. In this particular part
of it. what is known as the Shenandoah
Valley, they will find space for two million
people to live with plenty of elbow room.
and producing capacity enough to feed
ten millions. We are speaking from the
statistics. And as Major Hotchkiss told
them, the emigrants from the Northwest
will fiDd country bounded on the N ORTIZ
east by a range OF mountains over which
tants of which the word cyclone" is un-
known. Taken with the advantages it
offers. it is the cheapest land in the Union
outside of the Southern States, and when
its healthfulness is taken into considera-
ton, it is the cheapest land inside of the
Southern States. Its people are quiet,
orderly, law-abiding, and God-fearing pop
ulation, who have come to look upon the
past as the past and who look forward to
and study the future. Having had few
slaves in the time of slavery it has none
of the eneryating influences left as lega.
cy of other days, and none of the ludicrous
decisions that were born in the slavehold-
ing sections of the State about the great
raoc Of tho