Morning journal and courier., 1888-06-25
THE GREATNESS OF TEXAS.
Also the Greatness OF the New state
House. z.r9


Also the Greatness OF the New state
from the Atlanta Constftution.I
No man can travel through this great Lone
Star State, as I have often done, without
being impressed with it's magnitude and
present wealth and ov erawed at its prospect
I've Importance. We get but a vague idea
of its size when we are told that its area is
294, 800 square miles. It helps us to think
of il as<forty-one times as large as the State
N2f Rhode Island, six times as large as the
State of New York, and that it might have o
lake in the center of it 90 large that IL the
whole on France were anchored in the middle
of this 1akeit could not be seen from the Texas
shore. -*5a- g
Gov. Ross gaYe>Qe this morning few
facts about the fnancas of the State that
comport with its magnitude. Its bonded
indebtedness, mostly held IL the State, in
round numbers, ia 81, SOC, ,000N Like Uncle
Sam, it is troubled with surplus that It
don't know what TO do with. It has the
general State treasury surplus of Noyer
81, ,000, 600. Its school fund has surplus
of $16, ,000, 600, more than half loaned out on
county and railroad bonds, and they are seek
ing an investment for the balance.
The farmers to whom the State has been
selling its lands on forty years time, with
only per cent. interest, in the hope that
they would be very dilatory about paying
/ Gn0 prlQclpa1, are p1l1BR IN TIE money on Gn0
overburdened State treasurer. The counties
are doing the same. To add to its misery
the State has $4,000, 900 acres of land yet to
sell, which are, bringing every year higher
and higher prices. Poor Texasl Let every
nation and individual on the face of the
earth that is sighing 'sfor lack of dollar or
two" drop tear over the lofty loneliness of
this melancholy State.
The first State House of Texas was simply
double log cabin. Then came two or three
larger ones, one after the other. But such
was the obesity of the body polite that in
1875 State convention offered anybody
| three million acres of land up in the Pan
Handle that would build them real big
State House. These lands then were not
supposed to be worth more than fifty cents
an acre. Gov. Ross told me to-day that
under Gen. Houston he commanded the
frontier when he was nineteen years old, and
was all over these lands, then in q partlcu-
larly dry time. He says he has to confess
with shame that as member of that conven-
tion he told them how barren these lands
were, and that he wouldn't accept them as
gracious gift. Well, in five or six years
three men from Chicago cane along that
were fools enough to take up the ofer-they
said they would build them big, fine State
House for those worthless lands. These men
were John V. Farwell, his brother, Charles
B. Farwell, now United States Senator from
Illinois, and little man called Abner Tay-
lor. Work was begun in 1884, and, to help
along, some quarrYmen in Bolton gave all
the red granite for the building, and the
State sent its conyicts to quarry 1t. Now
the State has the largest State Capitol in the
Union, if not the finest, and second in size
only to the Capitol at Washington. It il
569 feet long, 287 feet wide, and its height,
from base line to the silver star in the
hand of the goddess Of Liberty surmount-
ing the dome, is Gil feet-four feet high
er than the national goddess at Washington.
It is grand, elaborate, and massive in its
exterior, and its 256 interior apartments are
light, airy, elegant, magnificent. 7 have
been all through it to-day, and don't won
der that Texans are tickled with it, Gov.
Ross tells me it cost the Chicago syndicate
| s., 500, 900 in cash. And what have they got
| to show for the pin money they have SPENT
A little farm that it takes 750 miles of
fencing to surround, to say nothing of cross
fences, watered. where lakes, rivers, and
springs are lacking, by flowing artesian wells
odly $50 feet deep-worth, says Gov. Ross,
50, ,000,0 900.