Arizona republican., 1903-04-05
A MICHIGAN INCIDENT
An Ebert Hubbard Reminiscence
 That Is of Interest Here.

issues here and will be till the raising of the necessary bonus to secure the factory is accomplished. And until | then anything bearing on the subject II will be read with interest by those who have the welfare of this community at heart. Following is a story that was published in the March number of The Philistine, a "periodical of protest, printed for all Philistines and any oth- CTS who will buy it and edited by FL bert Hubbard of East Aurora, N. Y., the pastor of the flock. But every per son of literary habits or tastes knows more or less about the Philistine and | MT. Hubbard, who is very peculiar in | his way, but who is making a great l success of life along original lines. | This story, like nearly everything else in The Philstine, is written by Mr. l Hubbard and is finely illustrative Of his literary talent. Rather than story, | perhaps, it is reminiscent sketch, but | it points such an appropriate moral for the people of this valley that it is re- produced in full. And it is entertain ing even without the moral:
 Twenty years ago I was a Travelling Man.
 I made the Michigan towns from De- troit to Bay City and Saginaw, then across to Grand Rapids, down to Three Rivers, and back by way of Kalamazoo, Jackson, and the present place of the Breakfast Foods, where they make Beesom, Balavorax and Helta- -Skelta; then over to the jayhawker town of Ann Arbor where there was nothing 1or, of the Yagerites-union forever!
 I wore a dinky derby, spring bottom pants, a red necktie, waXed mustache, and Warm Vest that would have made that coat of Joseph seem like the silence. I used to have a new vest every trip, and it was always a miracle in chromatics.
 But this was nothing to my smile my smile was contagious-when I ar rived in a place everybody smiled, and invited others to smile. The man who deals out Red Raven Splits smiled, the bus drivers glowed, the babies cooed, and the dining room girls giggled, when I came to town. That is what! I scattered smiles, lilac tinted stories, | good cheer, and silver small change all over the route. Especially the stories- I always started out with three New Ones, and I told 'em from Detroit clear around to White Pigeon, and back. And I sold the Goods.
 1 did not merely lay corner-stones and get things in shape. I did not secure d promise of an order the next time. l did not fix the man for a future trade, and then brag about it. Not I.
 I got his name on the bottom of tho order sheet That is what I did.
 Business was good up around that
 Saginaw country-it was the lumber. All the rivers were full of lumber
 booms. Business boomed, and I boomed business.
 But there came a day when things
 began to relax. Timber was getting
 scarce, and there were dire reports of
 failures. You had to be careful to
 whom you sold. Whole towns quit bus
 mess and moved away before you got back. They went where there was
 more timber. And as for the farmers why, you can't farm to any advantage
 in a stump country. Where the trees
 were cut off. the man who owned the
 land was unfortunate. If you put your hand in his pocket you would be in
 
 everybody said so. And I gave the land of the Michiganders the colo shake. That was eighteen years ago
 Recently I went over that same route
 again. This time I was distributing , the East Aurora Eloquence. I spoke
 at Lansing, Kalamazoo, Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, Caro-, Saginaw, Bay City Owosso and Alma. At each place the
 size of the audience was limited by the capacity of the house. Talk about you: , palmy days of the New England Ly- , ceum, At Owosso, for instance, there
 were fifteen hundred people in . church that was designated to seat a . thousand The people were well dressed f appreciative, intelligent and prosperous
 In each town I found the streets paved new brick blocks were being built , there were trolley lines public libraries water works, electric plants, higf , schools and savings banks.
 looked for the lumber mills, but they
 were not there. Span-new brick ant , stone factories stood where the old saw Q mills once were.
 , q thought this country was going t :. the devil!" I said to my friend pr George F. Butler, at Alma. $ We thought so, too, but we were e wrong," smiled the doctor as he adjust
 ed his diamond pin-"it is the sugal
 beets!"
 O The lumber business consists in cut h ting down trees. It is process of de
 struction. The trees took Nature ; D hundred years or more to produce. AnC n you can never grow a second crop 0 . pine on the same land-the trees ono
 gone are gone forever.
 V It was man by the name of Bradle. :, at Bay City, who conceived the idea o f raising sugar beets in Michigan. Al this prosperity was once an unspokel , thought in the mind of this one man : He studied the chemical properties o g the soil, and while making a tril V through Germany he found out the sor e of soil that was required to raise suga 1 beets. He put the two things togethe ,. and hastened home with a valise full 0 r beet seed.