The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1890-03-27

wheels and spindles of the Universe
And, over it all, skies as bright and a
climate as mild and healthful as evel
blessed primeval paradise. What more
could be asked? Why should hun
dreds of thousands Of emigrant home
seekers pour every year into the biz.
zardv plains of the far Northwest,
when such a land as l have described
holds out its arms and begs them to
come? Why should the enterprising,
thrifty, industrious multitudes flock to
a region where it is winter nine
months in the year, and id late
in the fall the other three-where it is
bitter struggle even for coyote or a
prairie dog to live-when the South
offers to all honest comers every
bounty of soil, climate, mine and for
est that Jehovah himself could possibly
bestow on His most favored children
Why should capital seek investment in
a thousand wildcat schemes and re-
mote barbarian lands, when the grand
treasure-houses of the gods in the
South only await the touch of enter
prise and energy to pour their infinite
riches into any Golfer? My dear fell
low, the South is one vast field of linn
itless resources, and it is only neces-
sary to SOW little money and nerve
and Yankee push to harvest whole
crop of flourishing cities and magnifi-
Gently paying ventures"
Here | interrupted to ask: q" "Where
or how is the rush to improvement you
speak of most manifest? In what does
it consist -
"Everywhere, in everything" he
replied. "From Virginia to Texas
the whole country is on the boom.
| New railroads are being pushed in
every direction new mines are being
opened new farms put in cultivation !;
new mills and factories established,
and new towns and cities founded.
Nothing in all the history of American
progress has ever surpassed the rapid
rise of some of these young cities.
They are veritable municipal Jonah's
gourds rising in the night, as it were,
from nothing, into the full rush and
dazzle of metropolitan life. Twenty
years ago Kansas City was rude from
tier village: to-day it has 10000
people and does tens of millions of
dollars of annual business. Fifteen
years ago Birmingham, Ala, was a
mixture Of delapidated cotton planta-
ton and unbroken forest. 1t could
have been bought then for dollar and
a quarter an acre. To-day it is rush.
ing, roaring city, claiming $1,000 in
habitants. and recognized as one of
the great iron manufacturing cities of
the world. Ten years ago Knoxville,
Tenn, was little more than rough
mountain village, chiefly known as
the former home of old Parson Brown
low. To-day it is a beautiful and
prosperous city of over 10000 people,
while in the same brief period Chatta-
nooga has risen from a railroad cross
ing and eating station to population
Of 80, 900 land proud position among
the young manufacturing cities of the
country. Galveston, Charleston, Nash
vile, Memphis, Pensacola and hun
dred other places show something of
the same astonishing growth, but they
are all somewhat tame compared with
some of the still newer cities that have
seemingly sprung like mushrooms out
of the earth. Not to mention Annis-
ton and Bessemer, Alabama, it is
scarcely five years since the land where
the pretty and flourishing city of Roa-
noke, Va, with its $1,000 people, now
stands, could have been bought for
ten or twenty dollars an acre. To-
day it will bring from s1oo to 5000 a
front foot. Eighteen months ago
land above the village of Johnson City,
in East Tennessee sold for from $40 to
$50 per acre. Recently twenty-five
foot lots of that same land have brought
from $500 to 900. Middlesborough,
KY, is a bustling mining and railroad
town to-day, where the wild forest
was unbroken by woodman's axe
twelve months ago. But why 60 on
with this list? There are dozens, scores,
hundreds, of such instances. Right at
the doors of Washington and Balti-
more which young cities are being
| founded within a few brief moons,
will be as notable examples OF this
wondrous Southern boom as any |
have mentioned. | have just spent a
day or two in one of the cities of the
near future, that is fair type OF all
the rest. But you must be tired. Pm
little so myself. What will you take?''