Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1905-05-10

with seedlings ready to set out, it
will be only few years before every
pound of tea consumed in South
Carolina will BIO grown in South
Carolina.
CATTLE GROWING AND TOBACCO
RAISING.
In the development of the cattle
growing industry there has been an
immense advance in this State in
recent years, and in little while we
shall be independent of the beef t'nst
and the butter trust and the milk
trust. Live stock men who know
anything about their business have
never doubted that almost any
branch of stock raising will flourish
here and some phenomenal records
have been made by our stock farm
ers in the last few years, and yet we
are only on the Threshold of
achievement in this lo,g neglected
and once despised branch of agricul-
tural effort.
Two years ago 80, 1912 acres of land
were devoted to the cultivation of
tobacco in this State. The crop ag-
gregated 25,625,40S pounds, worth
more than $3,0O0,OO0. According to
the United States census of 1890
South Carolina ranked nineteenth
among the tobacco growing States of
the Union, in 1900 it held the ninth
place and but for the enormous duties
laid upon the importation of foreign
tobaccos for the benefit of New Eng
land growers it would speedily cover
the distance between its present
rank and the frat place in the line.
SPECIMEN VAN WORST STORY.
The finest rice grown in the world
is grown in South Carolina. There
are no peaches to compare with the
peaches ripened on the slopes of your
beautiful mountains. The grapes Of
South Carolina would put to shame
the grapes 81 Eschol. In one of
their books the Van Worst women
describe a cotton mill settlement at
Columbia as follows: "There is not
a garden within miles, nor a flower,
scarcely tree. Arid, desolate,
beautyless, the pale sand of the State
of South Carolina nurtures as best it
can a stray tree or shrub-no more"
An arid, desolate, treeless country,
indeed when the facts are that there
is no State in the Union with 30
magnificent system of rivers, where
the rainfall is 80 regular and suffi-
cient for the needs of the manufac-
turer and husbandman, and where
there is 80 great an area of original
forest growth. A very careful sur
vey of the river systems of the
State made by Gadsden E. Shand
shows a drainage area of 24,974
miles and water power of of 562,511
This is doing fairly
we'll for an arid region and the fact
that the largest lumbesing plant in
the South has been established in
this State would seem to show that
South Carolina is not without very
liberal forest growth. Within the
last two OF three years several other
large numbering plants have been
in the State and in
little while still another immense
plant with capital of 100000 will
open its offices in Charlesto. 1t is
passing strange that men with money
70 invest would go into such business
N a treeless region. But this Van
Worst story is only a feather with
The many other stories which have
been invented by the same ac-.
,omplished romancists. Indeed, all
,he facts would show that South
Carolina answers to the descrip-
ion which was written by the
prophet Isaiah: GA place where
here is no want of anything that is
n the EARTH"
If we would be independent and
prosperous we must find some way
10 break the chains which have
pound us in