Morning journal and courier., 1885-12-05


 | From the Galveston Texas) News The Governor of Texas says: "Our des- cendants will be elbowing each other into the in order to find standing room in the l near future" A statesman does not confine himself to the present or even the near future, but statesmen differ as to what is the near future. Now what does the Governor mean by the near future? What century is it when our descendants, without the assis- tance of the descendants of assisted immi- grauts, will elbow each other into the sea During half century Bexar county, in the far West, has been attracting immigrants, colonies have been planted there, and 8 large city has grown up in the center ADf fertile district. At this time Be1ar county has a population of, say, 40, 900, and an area of 752, ,000 acres, of which 1000 acres at the outside are in cultivation Bexar county has developed as greatly by assisted and unas- sisted immigration in the last 50 years as may be expected in the next 800 years, if it
 is to be peopled only by -Four descendants. :"
 To people the county fully and bring all the
 lands into cultivation, would require pop ulation. This, at the rate of present or
 'natural' increase, would require five cen-
 turies. The Panhandle has population of
 about 40, 900 say, and an area of &, ,2S0, ,000
 acres. A great many of our descendants
 
 ness when they over-increase in Bexar, Guadalupe, and other middle counties. From 10, 900 inhabitants to 100000 is growth of population which the Panhandle promises in the near future. Tom Greene and a dozen other Rio Grande counties, with all
 lation of some 65,000 to produce descend ants.
 Without assistance, in what century would these descendants begin the elbowing pro cess? Evidently the near future of the statesman means a very remote future for the descendants of the common people of these western counties without artificial means of increasing the population of preserving the natural increase. In these dry districts it is believed considerable proportion of the inhabitants dry up and are blown away, and this mode of translation artifcially as sisted might dispense with the elbowing method of thinning out that overcrowded district Right up in populous Collin coun- ty, where the farms average only eighty acres, and the people are crowded to suffoca- tion, only one hundred and fifty thousand out of five hundred and sixty-fve thousand acres are in cultivation There is room in that county for the population to increase five fold. In Guadaloupe the population may increase more than twenty fold before ''our descendants" are at all crowded. Gal weston county may, within the statesman's s near future, be covered entirely with Calves ton city of seven story buildings and three story streets, paying the State a revenue of twenty million dollars year. Assisted i'm migration could not possibly hasten the el- lowing business more than half century. Possibly by A. D. 22S5 some elbowed de- scendant may be cursing the Texas exhibit at the New Orleans exposition and other schemes which have induced men of vim and energy to come this way and multiply, but any general movement of 'Four descendants' toward the sea by the elbow trail may not be expected until some centuries later. The people of Texas will not share with the Gov ernor any apprehension of the State being overcrowded in the near or distant future They do not object to immigration of a stur- dy race. They would even prefer to assist the coming of hsrd-workiog farmers from the poor lands of the East, who would buy and cultivate, the school and public lands, rather than to pay dollar to attract the speculators of the money centers to buy, rent out and monopolize these lands. The assisted young farmer, with money only suf | ficient to make payments on a quarter-sec- tion of school land, is worth more to Texas | than the capitalist who invests in the lands and visits the State only to collect rents. Which of these two is most likely to be attracted to the State by the policy of the present time!