Birmingham age-herald., 1894-09-12
 NORTHERN CAPITALISTS Aware of the Great Advantages of
 the South. NO BUREAUS ARE NEEDED A Suggestion as to the Best Means of Inducing lmml- grafton Southward.
NO BUREAUS ARE NEEDED

BDODQ6ACS. J-1AG ESC6ub COuN6ubtOGb OA southern business men, the opening of southern bureau and other movements in- tended to interest northern capitalists in southern investments have attracted very little attention In this city, and the work undertaken is so difficult that immediate results need not be expected. In, fact sim- liar methods have been tried before by numerous cities and towns in the south, and in no case was wholly successful.
 One fact that should be known to the promoters of these movements is that the capitalists of the north are not ignorant of the resources and possibilities of the south, as these movements imply. Every man with large amount Of capital to invest is continually studying new fields for invest nent, and there are scores of rich men in this city who have never been south who are in possession of enough facts about the resources of that section to stock several bureaus of information. They know the cost of mining coal and making iron in tue Birmingham district, the price of land, cost of transportation, condition of labor and all other important facis of record. Give them some guarantee that the invest- nnent will be safe. and they need no further information.
 There is plenty of money idle in this city! The expected immediate revival of business following the passage of the tariff bfll has not yet developed. There has been some improvement, but there is no general demand for money. The savings banks of tue state of New York, according to figures recently compiled, hold S150, 000, ,000 of sur plus money that is- carried without profit or at loss because it cannot be invested. After Il year of hard times and scarcity of work, during which thousands of work. men have drawn a part or all of their savings out of the banks, the deposits of the savings banks have increased instead of-diminished. The reason is that men of larger means, men with idle capital, have deposited 1t in the savings banks, where they know it is safe, although they cannot get more than per csut on 1t as rule while business conditions remain un- changed.
 This $15o, coo, ,Oo0 is the amount of surplus over and above the holdings of the savings banks under normal business conditions. New York city twenty-year per cent bonds were recently sold at 104. There is g glut of money in this market ready for in. vestment in anything that Is absolutely safe.
 It is credtable to southern enterprise that efforts are making by the leading men of that section to induce the investment of northern capital, but to be successful these efforts must be applied in the right direc- ton. A bureau or organization in which COD f1icting interests and rival communities attempt to work together for q common purpose, unless managed with more than ordinary skill, may do more harm than good, for individual and sectional iealous- les are almost certain to arise. To dispar- age the claims of one comm unity in the in- terest of nother is calculated to cause the capitalisI to distrust both, and what the south needs most of all at this time is to command and then maintain the entire con fidence of capital.
 That there is at this time waut of con- fdence in large class of southern invest ments is well known to every person who is even indirectly acquainted with the financial situation in this city.
 There are many reasons for this, most of them as well known in the south as here. It is not necessary to attempt a review of them or discussion of possible remedies.
 But there is one feature of the business and industrial situation of the south to which the promoters of the recently estab- lished bureaus of information and associations of business men can turn their attention with reasona- ble hope of success if they go at it in a practical and business like way. The south needs immigration of the desirable sort and can get it with proper effort. But bureaus of information maintaining of. fees in New York, where circulars adver- Using corner lots are distributed to all callers, will never turu the tide of immi- grafton southward.
 It is a weli-known fact that the great northwest has in twenty years been changed from wilderness 10 a populated and fairly prosperous community by the inflow of steady stream of immigration from Eu- rope. That section has been fortunate in getting a good class of smigrants. To be- gin with it had but one advantage over the south to offer; that was government land, which could be obtained for small sum. The climatic conditions of the south should more than offset the advantage of cheap land in the west.
 Now if the south will study the methods of the northwest and profit thereby the tide of immigration can be turned southward within two years.
 First of all, the great trunk lines to the west have been the main factors in sending hundreds of thousands of immigrants to that section. They haveagents in Europe, agents at Ellis island and in this city de- voting all their time to this business, A majority of the emigrants who come to this country intending to settle on farms are ticketed to the west before they leave El lis island.
 They go there because there is no one to tell them that in the south they can buy sland almost as cheap; that the climate is better and railroad fare as cheap. The same efforts put forth by southern land iowners, citizens and railroads working to- gether, would accomplish for that section what has been done for the west, build up waste places, increase population and val ues. But these efforts must be applied in- telligently, systematically and persistently. The fact that none of the principal rail- roads of the south have their own line, into New York is, of course, handicap. The local roads would get only & small per cent of the money from immigrants going south. But every perms neot settler along their lines would mean increased business ultimately, and wise management might be induced to labor for future results. The south ought in reason to expect much in this way from the newly organ
 ized Southern railway. That vast system, now under one management, with its own | lines reaching almost every section of the south and extending as far north as Wash