The Wadsworth dispatch. [volume] (Wadsworth, Nev.) 1892-1899, 1895-04-17

Stimulation-Real Estate Value Is De-
termined by Actual Condition Of Trade.
The industrial progress of the south,
like that of the northwest, has been re-
sarded by the exaggerated development
and premature collapse Of boom
towns" writes a correspondent Of the
New York Tribune. Many millions of
capital were invested between 1880 and
1890 with reckless credulity and blind
folly in real estate speculation and in
fated paper enterprises. There are vii
lagos in the southern iron belt where
land sales of 81, 900, 900 in volume were
made a few years ago at fictitious prices
and where farms were cut up into build
ing lots, streets laid out and severed
and electric light poles set up in open
fields. Yet not more than 20 or 80 fam
lilies are now living there. The money
invested in paper towns Of that kind
has been sunk and never will be recov-
cred. Other towns were doomed on
the strength of inaccurate or deliberate
ly falsified reports respecting the thick
ness of coal seams in adjacent districts,
and the collapse of their fortunes has
been complete. Another GLASS Of towns
which had a substantial basis in nat
ural u for industrial progress
has suffered from real estate speculation
far in advance of reasonable valuations.
Southern men. being conservative In
their ideas, have put less money into
booming" operations than northern in
v~estors, but they have met with heavy
losses. While many industrial enter
prises organized as gambling ventures
have ended in bankruptcy, not a few
have been reorganized, and with the re-
turn of better times will become profit
able.
Birmingham. the Magic City of Ala
bama, is not like Fort Payne, Cardiff
or other ''boom towns of an extreme
type. It's for the economical
production of iron are unexcelled any
where in the Union, and it is a natural
center Of manufacturing industry. These
facts are even more evident today than
they were in 1880, when the first fur
lace was built. Geological surveys have
confirmed in detail the earliest estimate
of the extent and value Of the Cahaba,
Warrior and Coosa coal measures, and
the quality Of iron mined In adjacent
districts has surpassed the expectations
Of the pioneers Of the industry In north
ern Alabama. Birmingham has not
shifted its place on the map. It Is as
near the coast as it was 10 years ago,
and its transportation facilities for col
leoting ore, coal and limestone and
sending out pig iron or finished products
have been greatly increased, but every
commercial traveller who enters 1t speaks
Of it as "a dead town" without trade,
and even with the most of the furnaces,
rolling mills and factories in full oper-
alton it is ~pervaded with q feeling Of
depression and dependency. Its natural
advantages and are undenia-
BILE, but its energies have been paralyzed
by an exhausting speculative debauch.
Birmingham was unknown before
1870 and of little reputation until after
1880, and then for ten years it forged
ahead Of all competing towns in the
southern mineral belt. Its industrial
progress was based upon the generaliza-
ton that wherever iron, coal and lime
stone were found close together in in
exhaustible quantity a manufacturing
and business stronghold would be es-
tablished. Having started upon its ca
reer as the natural center of the richest
and most favorably situated mineral
district in the south, it was advertised
throughout the Union by industrial pro-
moters, doomed" by real estate specu-
lators and artificially stimulated in
every way.
Rapid as was its growth during this
period of inflated activity, when boom
towns" were springing up like mush-
rooms throughout the south, real estate
spectators were calculating with Gre
dulity upon an expansion Of its popula-
ton and business during the present
decade that was beyond the range of