The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1889-08-15

than the sum invested in savings
banks by the people of Massachusetts,.
But even this was II big leap from 1870,
when the population was but 100000,
the valuation $3.50, 100000, and edu-
cation feeble in proportion. The push
up hill, that had doubled the popula-
ton and the property value of the
state in the first ten years after the
close of the war period, was good
reason for the great expectations"
that resulted in the air of those spring
months. Everybody was so full of
what was to be that the deficiencies of
the present were little needed. In
every town, we met a group of able
and broad-minded young men, not in
politics, getting their hand on the new
industrial interests of the state, who
said, "Come again in ten years, and
see what Texas is bound to become"
The vast railroad system that,
like Jobs war horse, "snuff-
eth the battle afar off," was
already spreading itself, like a fiery
charge of cavalry, toward the far west
and Mexico. 1t was only too easy to
believe what people so confident and
so ready to work for all they believed
in prophesied. We came home with
the old-time notion of Texas, in which
every Yankee school-boy forty years
ago, in the days when &c. T. T." stood
for the order of facts now symbolized
by skipped to Canada" was indoc-
trinated, thoroughly exploded, and be-
gan, like all returned tourists, to "talk
Texas" with the best.
For the past eight years, we have
kept our eye on the land of the "Lone
STAR" from the underground of
southern Missouri, Arkansas and
Louisiana, noting its prodigious adj
vance. One fact was revealed during
an interesting tour in these states,
three years ago, covering as much
ground as could be reasonably crowded
into a working school year,-that,
while all the southern states are call
ing aloud for respectable white immi-
grafton" (no other need apply, and
some of them are obtaining moderate
supply, with a flow of northern and
European capital in their manufactur-
ing and mining districts, and Florida
t is overrun every winter by a restless
crowd that leaves only a small detach-
J ment for permanent occupation, yet
? the only considerable drift into what
we once called "the SOUTH" since the
} war, has been upon the region between
the Missouri river in Missouri and the
e Colorado river in Texas. Here was
/ land unrivalled in some of the best
S elements of fertility and climate, in area
f are equal to half dozen states like
: New York, including southwest
n Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian
i Territory and Texas down to Aus,
|. tin and out to the panhandle,
d in 1865 as new as Dakota and Montana
v ten years ago, just consecrated to free
e labor, all ready to be occupied and
q wrought up to new American Para
d disc. The people had responded tC
5, the call, and from all all quarters al
V home and abroad had come seen, ano
d and "set up their Ebenezer." The
} rush OF immigration lldu qu"ui "PiON
:, the population of Texas in twenty
C years, changed Arkansas, spite OF he
II present ugly, political troubles, to on'
If of the most hopeful of the southern
e states, Transformed the old stamping
ground of the "border-ruffian," south
It west Missouri, to one of the most at
e tractive new portions of the republic
= and within the coming ten years vii
+ bring in the new state OF Oklahoma
6 and change New Mexico to civilizec
e and Americanized commonwealth
e We especially noted the rapid growtl
S of smart villages, called settles" dow
s. south, in the portion of Texas includes
: in this area and their zeal for building
s up the peoples school. In short, w
e we're prepared to go over and see tn
It fulflment of the prohecy of 1881.
0 The opportunity came the presen
Il year in cordial invitation from tn