The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1905-03-11
By H. E. BLAKEsLEE, Jackson.

40 PuOltSubtOn Will tu6 nOIl6 OllCV
at Meridian is a neatly printed and
well edited sheet. It's field of useful
ness is only limited by the lines of the
State, and the writer expects great
good to be accomplished. Under the
caption, Greater Mississippi" the fol-
lowing splendid article appears on the
first page of the last issue:
Mississippi is today at the apex of
her achievement and consequent
prosperity; the development of her
chief sources of wealth has not been
partial or one-sided, but whole, well
rounded, completes; the past three
years have marked a general uplift,
embracing every interest, business
and calling, and every class has shared
In the beneficient bestowment of a
common prosperity. The farmer has
made money; the merchant has en-
joyed a brisk trade and made good
collections; the banker is satisfied
with his dividends, while the manu-
facturer in every line has booked all
the orders that he could fill at salts
factory prices. These healthy ma
terial conditions have been reflected
in a happier social condition, evil
denced in more comfortable homes,
bigger and better churches, longer
school terms, better schoolhouses
equipped with better furnishings and
better teaching.
This happy and prosperous condi-
ton is not due to any fortuitous cir
cumstances or discovery of any new
our of wealth; there is in it all,
not the remotest suggestion of the
Western boom; but it is, on the other
hand, the logical result of compelling
aus that had been silently gather
ing strength through years of adver-
sity; it is the embodied triumph of the
courage and faith and fortitude of a
brave and loyal people who chung to
their birthright, meager as it seemed
to be, and transformed it into the
precious possession that is theirs to-
day.
Some Southern communities have,
at intervals, during the past quarter
of a century, blazcd forth in a daz-
zling glare Of prosperity that but
deepened the shadows of adversely in
which people were painfully
working their way toward the light;
and now and9 asaih we would hear a
voice from these luminous heights
Gliding us for our lack of enterprise,
our unprOgreSsiveness, Il inaptitude
in Selling and improving present OPP
p%ortunities; we did not yield up our
inheritance for the glamor of the
hour. The Mississippian believed in the
capabilities of his soil, his forests, his
pastures and his streams to furnish
forth a respondent estate when their
resources were developed; and while
he offered every legitimate inducement
to outside capital, enterprise and in
dustry to come and help and hasten
this development, he did not proffer
his estate in fee simple for the price
of an evanescent splendor, nor did
he yield to the stranger to be eX-
plotted for his own enrichment. He
had faith in the ultimate realization
of, his abundant wealth, and with
patience, perseverance and hopeful
ness labOred constantly toward that
day, which, happily, now, has dawned,
and he has a right to rejoice in the
rich reward that has come to him.
"On every hand are seer the tangi-
BILE results of this patient labor and
steadfast purpose. The frame farm
house occupies the site of the ancient
cabin of logs; the smokehouse is full
of homegrown meat; the cribs are
full of corn, and sleek cattle browse
on every hillside; there is music in
the parlOr and books upon the shelves;
the children are at school and my lady
goes visiting in her own buggy.
In the cities and towns of the
State the signs of a like prosperity
are even more manifest; electric
1iuhtc and uy0fnrunrlC undrnonon1 nf
luXuries in the past, are now regarded
as necessary equipments for every
town out of the village class; a popula-
ton of a thousand justifes the esttab-
lishment. of a bank, and there is not
a town anywhere that is not reaching
for a larger manufacturing equipment;
the graded school system, rounded out
with a high school, is the common
educational provision, while every am
bilious village not on a railroad has
firmly resolved to build it.
I'm the lumber region, land once
only valued for stumpage, is now be-
ing sold at good prices for agricultural
and horticultural purposes; truck
farms and orchards yielding rich re-
turns are multiplying around every
OdW I'LL CSAIST WASI6 Tile llI1U0T has
been cut, and the metamorphosis is
noted of lands doubling in value after
the removal of the timber that form
erly alone gave them any market value
at all.
"The canneries along the gulf coast !
have more than doubled their output
of fish, oysters and shrimp during the
past five years, giving employment
at good wages to a correspondingly
larger army of people and contributing
generously to the prosperity of that
section of the State.
"These are a few of the conspicuous
manifestations of Mississippi's present !
day wealth and prosperity; but they
are, as it were, but the pledge of a
still brighter day; of a still greater
Mississippi that is being rapidly and
substantially built upon the firm
foundations that her people have
wisely and carefully laid"
One of the best writer's in the State,
and a gentleman who can see on
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