Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-07-30
THE GREATNESS OF TEXAS.
Also Something About the Great
ness of the New state House.

1
Also Something About the Great
! ness of the New state House.
No man can travel through this grea
Lone Star State, as l have often done
without being impressed with its magni
tude and present wealth, and overawe'
at its prospective importance. We ge
but vague idea of its size when we ar
told that its area is 294 900 square miles
/ helps us to think of it as forty-on
mes as large as the State of Rhod
Island, six times as large as the State o
New York, and that it might have lax,
in the center of it SO large that if th'
whole of France were anchored in th'
middle of this lake it could not be seer
from the Texas shore.
Governor Ross gave me this mornin,
few facts about the finances of the STATE
that comport with its magnitude. IT.
bonded Indebtedness, mostly held in tht
State, in round numbers is $4 SOC, 900
Like Uncle Sam, it is troubled with 6
surplus that it does not know what to de-
with. 1t has in the general State
Treasury a surplus of SIG, 900, 900, more
than half loaned out on county and rail
road bonds, and they are seeking an in.
vestment for the balance.
The farmers to whom the State has
time, with only per cent. interest, in
the hope that they would be very dilatory
about paying the principal, are piling in
the money on the overburdened State
Treasurer. The counties are doing the
same. To add to its misery the State
has 100000 acres Of land yet to sell,
which are bringing every year higher and
higher prices. Poor Texas Let every
nation and individual on the face OF the
earth that is signing "for lack of dollar
or two," drop tear over the lofty lone
liness 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 Conven-
ton offered anybody 100000 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 so cents an acre. Governor
Ross told me to-day that under General
Houston he commanded the frontier
when he was nineteen years old, and
was oil over these lands, then in per-
fectly dry time. He says he has to con-
fess with shame that as member of
that Convention 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 came
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. Far
we'll, now United States Senator from
Illinois, and little man called Abner
Taylor. Work was begun in 1884, and,
to help along, some quarrymen in Boston
gave all the red granite for the building,
and the State sent its convicts to quarry
it. 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 is 562
feet long, 2S7 feet wide, and its
height, from base line to the silver star
in the hand of the goddess of lib
erty surrounding the dome, is 311 feet
four feet higher than the national god
dess at Washington. 1t is grand, elab-
crate and massive in its exterior, and its
256 interior apartments are light, airy,
elegant, magnificent. l have been all
through it to-day, and 1 don't wonder
that the Texans are tickled with it. Gov
ernor Ross tells me it cost the Chicago
syndicate 4,500,O 900 IN cash. And what
have they got to show for the pin money
they have spent? A little farm that it
takes $50 miles of fencing to surround
to say nothing Of cross fences, watered,
ing, by flowing artesian wells only $50
feet deep-worth, says Governor Ross,
$9, ,000, ,000.-[Atlanta Constitution.