The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-09-29
TO THE SOUTH
Will the Tide of Immigration
 Turn.

Baltimore Special.
 Those who have witnessed the setting up of the West, the Northwest. the far North and latterly Oklahoma and Indian Territories, are now directing their atten- | ton to the advance guard of the greatest immigration movement in years. This | refers to the influx of Northern and Wes- tern people into the South and Southwest. To the close observer 1t would seem that the forces that builded up the West and Northwest, peopling those vast domains with the best blood and brawn of the overcrowded East and Central West, are now uniting for greater work in the Southwest"
 "The claim that 1t is impossible to at- tract white immigration to the South Is contradicted by the experience of every man who has kept in touch with South ern development, is refuted by every au- thoritative statement of statistics, in cluding tho findings of the federal cen- sus, and so obviously untenable as proposition that it shodld excite amuse- ment rather than apprehension. I was identified with immigration work in the West twenty years ago. The foundation work was laid twenty years ago. So 1t is in the South. We expect the next ten years will bring us due reward for our work
 These statements are made by men ac- quainted through personal experience with successful immigration work in the past for the West, and who now are ap- plying well-tested, practical methods to the peopling of the South with thrifty | farmers and other settlers. The field of the one is west of the Mississippi: the | field of the other is east of that river. Their utterances reflect the spirit of a score of letters published in the October number of the Southern Farm Magazine of this city from officials of Southern and Southwestern railroads engaged in the task of finding suitable homes in the | South for thousands of men from the North and West and elsewhere wno have l begun to realize the wonderful opportu- nities for them in the South. Nearly two years ago analysis of the population figures of the census showed there wal a greater movement of whites to the South than from 1t, and at the same time that the negro population was diffusinl itself so rapidly that nearly 100000 ol the S,S4O,00O negroes in the country ther lived outside the South. Since the cen sus was taken this movement of whites to the South and negroes from 1t hal been acceierated. and the reasons for it as far as the whites are concerned. ap pear in the letters from the industria and immigration agents of the Southern railroads.
 These are not theoretical. They give definite facts. They tell of more thar T5, 900 Northern and Western farmers set tied daring the past ten years betweer New orleans, La, and Corpus Christi Texas; with 3,0OU000 acreSo farm land 800, 900 of them irrigated for rice. brough under up-to-date agricultural methods; O. 1.2OO farmers rom outside who, during the past year, purchased and settled dpor lands on the lines of one railroad soutl of the Potomac and east of the Mississip pl; of 1t being possible to draw an ap proximately straight line 100 miles lonl through three Virginia counties in thu so-called black belt without probabl! crossing an acre of land owned by a ne gro, and of large per centage of thu farms thus crossed being found in thu hands of farmers from the North ant West and of an old field in Georgia trans formed within a twelvemonth into { fiourishing settlement of four hun dred people, with another colonI
 of 200 persons from Indiana and Ohio no
 far away, and of the incoming to various
 points of individual farmers. merchants
 and mill men. In Halifax County, Vir
 ginia, there are more than 200 families O.
 well-to-do people from the West. while