The National tribune., 1903-08-27
JOURNEYING TO THE GOLDEN GATE.
Southern Route to San FanccoTe New South with its Cotton
Mills and Other Enterprises Swampy Region from
Mobile to New Oreans-Cetton and Rice Regon-Oh Fields.
Texas and Her Industries.
Editorial Correspondence.

For variety of reasons, all OF them
personal. l decided to go to San Francisco
by the Southern Pacific, in spite of the
warnings of my friends of the extreme
torridity and dust of that road III Mid
summer. Leaving Washington al night,
morning found us running along the loot
hills of the Blue Ridge, where the most
wonderful development of all IN the sodth
is taking place. Within the last few years
a very large proportion of the cotton man
ufacturins of New England has been
transferred to this region-proNimlty to
the cotton crop, cheap labor, and limit
less wealth of waterpower being the con-
trolling reasons. From the james Rlver
to the Chattahoochee every little town Is
now a succession of long, low. one-stofy
buildings, mostly windows, with hat-niet;u
roofs. and which at night will Hash IKE
a joyful illumination with electric HGAtS.
For hundreds of miles it is an endless sue
cession. looking at night like some endless
torcil-light procession on a gigantic sciie.
The effect upon the surrounding couh-
fry on this commercial irruption Is most
potent.
THE PEOPLE OF THE NEW SOUTH.
The people are being transformed from
the improyident and almost purposeiess
dwellers in little shacks and spaSmodic
filters of scanty patches of corn and cot
ton into methodical, industrious opera
tives in the cotton mills, rising at the
sound of the factory bell, gathering at
their work at rigidly appointed hours, Ia
boring seriously, silently aud purposefui-
" at their appointed tasks during set
time, and getting good wages every Sat
urday night.
This must necessarily effect total
e no oh RI ctpr and uaplIS
of the people, and there are outward evl-
dencps of it. The natives of this region
are. after all of the best bload, as they
originally came from the North OF Eng
land, North of Ireland and Scotland, de-
sce,u;ants of those who were in manner
forced out of Great Britain by the victor
ious faction after the suppression or the
Rebellion OF 1745. They are IN entirety
different blood from the descendants OIL
the paupers and eonvjcts WHO, IN the carry
part of the 18th century, were brought
TO fine low lands of Georgia, the Carolinas
and Virginia to work On the plantations.
This latter constitutes the poor white
trash of the South. very distinct element
and wholly different from the Preso!ter-
ians. Baptists and other dissenters wno'
when England was no longer comfortable
for them. migrated to this country, and
to find homes in the back country and the
mountains. This is the strongest Dlood
in the South, as those of us know VINO en-
countered regiments from the mounta IN
regions of Virginia and North Carolina
duIiug the war. They are men and wo-
mea of decidedly strong character and
good habits of thought on most subjects.
1t is from this section that the real BRAINS
and activity of the South have always
come, and it il worth while mentioning
that it is the same blood which viii fur-
nish Speaker of the next House IN the
person of Uncle Joe" Cannon, who hrst
saw the light in the Piedmont region or
North Carolina.
very mucl-needed industrial training and
proper business ideas, but along with it,
as is always the case, will be proper moral
and social ideas. and they are dong a
work in the South not surpassed by that
of the churches.
1t is very interesting to Study the
villages which have sprung up arourd
these cotton mills. They are all composed
of neat frame houses as prImly painted
as those in New England, but there is
a Difference to Southern ideas in each OF
them being set up on pillars of brick two
or three feet above the ground, With room
for the air to circulate beneath.
The managers of the works apparently
have not hampered the tenants with too
many rules and regulations; they have
simply furnished them with neat, COM
Portable houses and let the rest develop
as it would. Already the result OF this
can be seen in the starting OF flower beds
and the planting of shade trees by men
and women who had before dwelt IN shaD-
by cabins without the slightest effort to
improve esthetically their surroundings.
Another decade will see all the charac-
teristics of the carefully-kept New Eng
land villages with their sidewalks. their
trimly-kept front yards, well tended flow
ers. and their abundant kitchen gardens IN
the rear. Every little community has It's
pretty little church and inviting schoo
house. which speak volumes for the re-
ligious and educational work being done
The fields along the road show that a
much more careful agriculture is taking
the place of the old slOyenliness. The
fields of cotton, beans, and peas are as
neatly worked as most exacting Northern
farmer could wish. There are no more
weeds in the rows than could be seen II
u .nnsylvana or New York. One peculi
nrity pleasantly strikes the Northern Wis
flor In the North and West it is the
farmers pride to draw rigidly straight
furrow, and when one whirls by the corr
fields of Indiana and Illinois he passe:
succession Of flashes of light miles Ions
meridian. Here the plowman loves TO de
scribe semicircles, arcs, Yolutes and othe
notifications of the curving line of beauty
He produces some very pleasing effect
with his semi-circles, and a little field o
cotton, now blooming with holiyhoek-hk
profusion in sweeping, graceful lines, is ;
thing of beauty.
There are reasons for this method o
blowing. as there are for most things il
the world; the soil is light, the surface O
the ground is everywhere broken int
. mounds, ridges and hillocks, and by pillow
Ing semi-circularly around rise an
leaving a ''land" every few score of fuI
rows, the ground is laid off into natura
terraces, which prevent its washing.
IS a method which might be employed i
many parts of the West, where there
like tendency of the lands to wash int
sterile, securing "scars."
The people at the depots who get o
and off the trains are remarkably diffel
ent from those seen on the roads runnin
Through the lower portions of the Soutl
They are all neatly dressed, well-behavet
thrifty-looking people, who seem 10 /
getting the most ont of this life and doin
their full share of the work Of the work.
As Atlanta is approached the railroa
climbs hiss,.s- and higher, and for IL
miles or more runs along the very tor
of the mountains, with elevations al
preaching 5000 feet, but there is the san