Birmingham state herald., 1896-01-05
EMIGRATING SOUTHWARK Farmers of the West Leaving
 Their Homes. SELLING HlGH-PRlCED LANDS And Coming South Tie Magnitude of the Movement Causing Alarm in West
 ern States.

In seven-column article the Chicago Times-Herald calls attention to the fact that Iowa, South Dakota Nebraska Kansas and Wisconsin are being drained of their population and that strong tide of emigration has set in from these states toward the south. Several of the western states are alarmed by the vol ume of this movement, and in all 1t has become serious enough to attract earnest attention.
 For year past railroads having large tracts of land In the south have been at work among the farmers of the north west with enticing pictures of life below Mason and Dixon's line, and they are now reaping the fruit of their labor. They have agents scattered oyer several states, who are gathering the brawn of western prairies and sending it south to fell for ests and till farms. A feature of the work is the organization of a number of colonies, which will give the northern people the society of neghbors and oth- CTS who have Ideas and tastes in com mon. These settlements are to be con- ducted somewhat on the plan of the farm villages of Germany. The colonsts will live ill d. central village, and they will go tC and from work on their farms lying outside.
 An incidental feature of this emigra- tion is the fact that most of the emi- grants are republicans, While politics do not figure In the plan of the rail- roads, the movement has attracted the attention of politicians, who, in some cases, notably in Nebraska. have tried to prevent the emigration by declaring that life in the south has many ser.ous dra wbacks for northern people, But neither press nor railroads nor politi- clans have been able to stem the tide, and the farmer, filled with the pleasant prospect of working the year round in his shirt sleeves, turns deaf ear to their walls when the emigrant agent tells him he cannot afford to raise corn for the Chicago market on land worth $40 to $1G0 an acre, when he can buy land in the south from $6 to s15 an acre. He even talks of two and three crops year, and promises low freight rates to reach mar kets. These considerations have led thousands of farmers in the northwest to sell their high priced land to emigrat6 south. The principal railroads concerned in this movement are the Illinois Central, the Queen and Crescent the Louisville and Nashville and the Georgia Southern. Mississippi seems to be getting larger share of the new emigration than any other southern state, but Louisiana, Ar kansas. Missouri. Alabama and Tennes- see are all getting share of it.
 The Illinois Central closed a contract WlIn tne CatnOl1C COiOnlZaLlOn company for town site of 160 acres at Merigold, Miss At the head of the company Is Father T. r. Cashman of this city, and the enterprise Is said to have the ap- proval of Archbishops Feehan and Ire land. The plan Is to establish colony of Catholics from the north, and the ma terlal for a newspaper office will be for warded this week. Two miles east of Merigoid there is to be a Lutheran col ony. composed mostly of Norwegian farmers from the neighborhod of Story City. Ia. A third colony has been started at Boyle's, with Germans and Holland ers from the eiehborhood of Cedar Rap ids, la Fortytwo of them were sent down last week, and one Cedar Rapids firm has sold 5000 acres of Mississippi land to Iowans going south. Louis Auer & Son of Milwaukee are planting a col ony Of Germans and Poles from Wiscon- sin a. Gainesville.
 These are indications of the movement to the south, but do not show its magni- tude for hundreds of northern farmers are acting as individuals in the migration southward The Illinois Central alone has twelve to fifteen agents at work in Iowa. eight in South Dakota, two in Wis consin, two in Nebraska and a number in> Illinois,-all of whom are sending col onists south.
 To this must be added the work of sev- eral other railroads and immigration so- cieties, and the result in the aggregate is imposing.
 "The chief arguments in promoting emigration to the south," said E. P. Skene of the Illinois Central today "are the cheapness of land and the mildness of the climate. Western railroads, news papers and politicians are trying to stay the tide, but think we have the better arguments"
 Dispatches from western points indi- cate more fully and forcibly than the work of a single railroad the magnitude and the widespread character of the mi- gra lion 10 the south