Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1901-03-06
SAM JONES ON TEXAS.
Says Texas IS Prosperous and
Booming, But Needs the
Services of Mrs. Nation

Editor of the Atlanta Journal:
I have spent about week travel
ing through the cotton bslt of
Texas from Sherman to San
t1arcos, from San Marcos to
Shreveport, La. Texas is still
picking cotton every day now,
Texas has, perhaps, one million
bales in the cotton yards over the
State unsold. Some of the towna
bave 5000 bales in the cotton
yards, some 10000, some 1000,
some 1000, bu, everywhere you
see the unsold cotton. l have
looked over the farms along the
way. The farmers are very late
in the preparation of the ground
or a new crop. No rain in the
Black Bolt of Texas since the
Ist Of November, and the ground
is too hard to plough.
The wheat crop of Northern
Texas Is not looking we'll. The
drought and Hessian fly is the
cause; but l never saw such a
glow of prosperity on Texas as she
uanifests to-day. The famers are
on top, cotton on hand money to
:and, banks overaowing and
merchants busy. A member of q
firm in Denton, Tex, said to me,
81 can't supply my customers
with implements. I've sold 100
buggies since January l.. Drum
mers from St. Louis tell me that
their houses have instucted them
to sell no more carload lots, but
in small amounts to the trade"
Texas supply this year in the
pockets Of the farmers is just
what the Georgia farmers would
have but for the enormous outlay
for guano. Georgia must have
commercial fertilizers. Texas
don't need them. The tenants on
these rich farm lands in Texas
oay the landlords So money rent
per acre, and that's what it costs
for guano per acre in Georgia. If
T were q farmer / would rather
rent land in Texas than own it III,
Georgia.
The black cotton lands of
Texas are selling for $50 to $50
per acre; $50 per acre will buy
the best lads tea miles from
towns.
The'question is not how much
L ,tton can Texas make, but how
much cotton can they pick out
1 have straveled through Texar-
sana to Ell Paso. from Texasline to
Galveston, and, I stay within the
facts whenI say that not one
tenth of Texas cotton lands ever
had a plow ON them. If you will
furnish Texas with half-a million
more plaw mules and negro glow
men they will and can make IN
Texas this year eight million
bales of cotton, weighing 500
pounds each. The delta Of the
Mississippi in LOUISIANA and the
good cotton lands of Texas can
make fifteen million bates and not
use pound of guano, and with
average seasons make bale 10 the
acreone year with another. Ala
bama, South Carolina and North
Carolina must look to their
manufacturing interests and their
farmers to diversified crops and
homemade fertilizers or go broke
in a few years.
Texas can produce her own
wheat, corn oats and ship millions
of dollars worth of cattle, hogs,
sheep, mules, horses etc., annually.
Georgia is no longer the Empire
State of the South. Texas has the
blue ribbon tied on her now.
The thing I marvel at in Texas
is that her cities do not grow apace
with her towns and rural districts.
Dallas seems to be full grown,
Fort Worth is q dwarf, San
Antonio a couglomeration, with
her population half invalids, and
the other half, I am told, made up
up of 27 different pationalities.
Aust in, minus her dam is dead.
Waco ought to be named Wake
No-More. Houston, the only city
Of growth and commercial enter.
prise since the Galveston horror,
put that city in the background;
but there are a hundred prosper
Gus, growing towns in Texas, with
growing populations ranging from
three to fifteen thousand.