The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1890-06-19

fraudulent schemes in operation. If
there are any they are located in the
East and no one can be hurt by them
who cares to make an investigation.
Those who invest their money without
looking into the enterprise probably de-
serve to be swindled, and beyond doubt
there are schemes being tioated in which
there is little or no merit.
The principal frauds now being per-
petrated upon the South and investors
in new towns is through the establish
ment of factories with old and unim-
proved machinery. A land company in
duces some Eastern concern to put up a
plant in new town, taking some of the
stock in it in order to keep their prom
ises to investors, and the Eastern man in
a number of cases fits up the place with
machinery that has been purchased
cheap and is incapable of turning out
first class goods. How then can these
institutions hope to compete with the
West and the East in the manufacture of
goods?
Captain II. S. Chamberlain, who rep
resents the Cooper Hewitt interests III
this section, though engaged in a little
town lot enterprise himself, told me that
he did not know how the excitement
now pervading the Industrial South
would end.
eve have too much of it," he said.
Prices have been put mp too high and l
am afraid the system of initiation win
retard the permanent development of
places naturally fitted for improve
ment."
Captain Chamberlain is the president
of an iron and land company in which
Mr.. Abram S. Hewitt is interested and
just now is engineering sale of town
lots at lockwood, about seventy miles
from Chattanooga. lockwood is already
established, but as Mr.. Rice of Fort
Payne fame, swooped down five miles
from there and cradled Cardiff, the
lockwood people determined to get up
a boom for self preservation.
If we had Castle Garden or u Barge
office out here these new aspirants for
population might with reason expect to
realize the expectations or representa- |
tions of their projects, but until a bona
fide population comes this way it is |
difficult to see where the necessary
number of citizens are to be obtained to |
make so many cities.
All the new born towns have piles of |
rock, considerable ledges of ore and |
some coal. The men employed on the |
furnaces are colored, even to the super
intendents, as a rule, and lack of skilled |
labor is deeply deplored. The colored |
man, though, is well suited to furnace |
work and can stand it better probably |
than the white man, and he is less likely |
to enter into organizations and go upon
strikes. The cheapness of labor is one |
of the great advantages the South has
and when manufactures begin to turn
out first-class goods there will be no
need for it to purchase in the East or |
West. With timber everywhere avail |
able, all the furniture in this section of |
the South comes from the Northwest, |
and the optimistic promoters declare |
that in a few years the South will manu-
facture all her own furniture and crowd |
the Michigan factories to the wall
I'VE do not expect to sell to the entire |
country" the head of recently estab- |
lished mandatory said to me, but we |
will produce all the South needs and |
keep the money here that is annually |
going into the North and West. We 4
have everything we need here to make |
what we require, and ere long the
country will be so populous that all our
resources will be taxed to the utmost to
supply the demand, While all this eX-
citement in the founding of new towns
10 SOlllS OH We are HdIu dJ WOIh duu
producing substantial results. The ex-
citement will die out pretty soon, but
do not think that the consequent de-
preston will be serious enough to affect
trade injuriously. Somebody will get
hurt when tile tiderecedes, but it will be
the speculator and not the permanent
investor. The men you see now bowling
about town lots are in degree gamblers.
They are the men who would play the
horse race or gamble in stocks. More
money is to be made now in specializing
in real estate values in the South than
Wall street promises, and as matter of
course speculatoIs turn this way. Values
are high here, it is true, and the last
man who holds the bag, will find it
empty, possibly. These new town sales
are not correct eXponents of the real
condition of things; they are merely the
crests of the waves of prosperity rolling
southwark and underlying the apparent
initiation is a substantial advancement.
We must and will build up, and immigra-
ton will tend this way in numbers
which will warrant the establishment of
enterprises such as we are putting up
now. No real investor can lose his
money here if he is reasonably careful
and judicious, and all we want is investi-
CATION"