The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-19
BUCKA1UNNA, MISS.
Buckatunna, Miss. March ss, 1900.

Buckatunna, Miss, March 26, l90o'
 To the Editor of the Journal and Courier
 An off day or two in Mobile offered an onnortunity to run up into the eastern edge of Mississippi via the Mobile and Ohio railroad, to the pleasant and thrlV- ing little town of Buckatunna, where found I was only three miles from CfA- cora, where one of the largest mills Ill
 the south gives employment to three or four hundred hands in all its opera
 tions This company has been manu-
 featuring southern pine timber and lumber of all dimensions for some thir-
 ty years, formerly near Pensacola, fia.,
 then at Moss Point, with Pascagoula for it's shipping port, but now in the midst of very large tract of pine land around Chicora. where the plant is now
 located three miles west of the Mobile and Ohio railroad. with which It has di- rect connection by a spur track A brief call at Chicora, where l was pilot ed by a young colored driver, only made me more anxious for more extended
 visit I was disappointed in not finding the owner and founder of the Robinson
 Land x Lumber company, MT. George
 w. Robinson, at home, but his general superintendent, MT. Swift, was exceed ingly courteous and to him and his good
 wife I was greatly indebted for their
 generous hospitality, Mir. Swift gave me an opportunity to see all the opera
 tions of the various works at the mill and much valuable information about
 the lumber and other interests of Mis-
 sissippi The land from which the com pany get their supply of logs comprises
 thirteen townships or almost three hun-
 dred thousand acres, of which ten
 townships are still heavily timbered
 with more than one billion, eight hun- dred million feet of the raw material.
 TO this immense supply they are still
 adding by purchase and lease, so the
 supply is practically inexhaustible. at
 least for this generation or the next, as
 there are immense tracts still in the market adjoining them, The privilege
 of "boxing" for crude turpentine is
 leased to small operators, who find
 ready market for their products at the
 numerous turpentine stills, which drive lucrative business in converting the crude article into naval stores (spirits or
 turpentine and rosin) which are staple
 products in this country. The first part
 of the operation consists in running railroads into the timber lands chang ing the routes as the trees are cut off,
 surveying the land as it is purchased or leased, shipping the logs to the mill, where they are dumped into the lake made by a dam across small stream, which appears to have been placed there X oigS- t1zrt ha with the most intelligent use of the forces of nature, among which steam and gravitation play important parts. Manual labor is very fast becoming a cash article, and with it's present price, as we'll as that of cotton and lumber, MT. McKinley's prosperity is looked upon as the genuine article, all wool i and yard wide. A trader who carries | a large number of colored men on his books, told me that one of his custom CTS was nearly paralyzed at the begin- ming of this year on being told that | there was a clear balance of twenty dollars in the customers favor. He had accepted being in debt as the normal condition of the colored man. Another man who was refused any credit a year ago, was not quite ready to give | up. and went back to his bit of land and miserable shanty with no supplies | for the season. But he went to work. and when there was no more meal In the
 barrel and all the chickens in the region
 roasted too high for him, hired out for a | few days to replenish his scanty larder,
 and was then his own boss for a few
 days. and made the dirt fly in his own
 small corn and cotton fields. By follow