The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-01-21
H0MESEEKERS' EXCURSIONS
 FROM WEST T0ALABAMA
About Half the Heads of Families Who Come Prospecting Make Puchases--N Towns
 Constantly Springing Up.

! comes into Baldwin county to raise beans, potatoes. cabbages and peaches would have trouble about his market. The Mobile market Is good enough for a city of it's size, but it can be easily ! glutted when the Baldwin county truck 1 farmers begin shipping in earnest and it Is often glutted. But an overwhelm- ing majority of the stuff goes north. principally to Chicago. It is declared 1 about here that the stuff can be raised and shipped as far north as Chicago with profit to the man who grows it. | Some of the immigrants who have grown it and shipped it. say so. In the beginning the agents of the land companies who do missionary work in and around Chicago convince the prospective immigrants that this can be done. The new road has had wide influence in working out this problem. During last spring and sum mer every train that went from Foley to Bay Minette went loaded with pro- duee. From 200 to 300 barrels of po- tatoes, so the railroad men say, were shipped out every day.
 The Baldwin county truck farmer in the matter of shipping and selling his produce has the advantage of truck farmers in any other portion of the State. They are more or less familiar with conditions which obtain in Chi cago. The land companies have agents and headquarters there They are in touch with the markets on the one hand and the Baldwin county vegeta- ble grower on the other.
 Biggest Question of the Day.
 These are the things which make the immigration movements of Baldwin county of such moment to other por- tions of Alabama. It is the biggest xybi irh loh be many people who believe that the greater the paramount question before the people of Alabama Is the railroad rate question, even as there were twelve years ago as many or more peo- pie who believed that the happiness and welfare of Alabama depended up- on the success of the Farmers Alliance movement. The rate question is cer- tain of adjustment, and the adjustment is not likely to be made by either tho radicals for the railroads or the radi- calls against the railroads.
 But the immigration question Is not so sure of adjustment. Alabama is not so sure that there will be enough people to win the hidden treasures that lie within the soil She is not so sure that she will have in the future sufi- cieut energy and muscle to win the re- wards from the rich farming lands.
 There is no need to say aught or the deterioration of negro labor. There is no need to again recall the potent facts of the rapid disappearance of the negro from the Alabama farms and the Alabama plantations. It Is sufficient to say that there is not a country. not beat in all Alabama that is not vitally interested In the question of immigra- tion. which grows more pressing with each year.
 For which the county of Baldwin, where the problem is being successful ly worked out, Is a ripe subject for study and research. For here they arc not only talking about and resoluting about immigration but they are getting them. They are getting them and put ting them down to work in the pine lands.
 Some of them go back. From all new countries immigrants go back. All the immigrants who come to Alabama, from Virginia and North Carolina in the pioneer days. did not stay. Some went back but majority stayed. Even as a majority of the Baldwin county immigrants are staying.
 Just now Baldwin county is to the rest Of the State like a big demonstra- ton and experiment station giving in structlon on the vital question of im- migration. -. :.