The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-02-09

ones would not make expenses. Int convention adjourned then until o'clock.
 | Letters expressing their deep regre' | at being unable to be with the cane | growers were read at the afternoon ses
 sion from Hon. John Dymond of Lou. 1 isfana and Dr. H. w. Wiley, Chief oi | the Bureau of Chemistry of the Agri' l cultural Department. pr. Wiley. iks | Secretary Wilson, was detained by ar 1 important hearing before the Congres' l sional Committee on Agriculture. n I his letter Dr. Wiley told of his dis' appointment on board a dining cal 1 rushing through the Southern States | when he asked for some pure Southern cane syrup and the best thing he could | get was fabricated article of spuri, | ous maple syrup. He suggested that e 1 Commerce Committee be named from the convention to do missionary work | that the North might be informed oi l the delights of cane syrup. | At this point Governor Broward was presented to the audience and 1t was | his good fortune to receive a warm and generous welcome. His State, the Gov ernor said, was not alarmed or uneasy | on the question of immigration. The immigrants had come in and would come in just as fast as the State of Florida was able to take care of them
 The tide of immigration had been nat ural but sufficient. The Governor re- called that of the pension rolls of the State of Florida more than half were the names of Confederates from other Southern States. He recalled that 20 per cent. were from the State of Ala bama.
 Advancing close to the subject of his address. the governor of Florida told his hearers that no les than $137.000.- 900 worth of sugar was each year im- ported into the United States. He ran over quickly the lists of the food pro- ducts raised in the United States and exported to other countries. the total of which would not equal the value of the sugar each year brought into the United States.
 And yet" he said fmpressively all that sugar could be raised on 100000 acres of reclaimed lands in the Ever glades." And with that he began to talk of the enormous internal improve ment the State of Florida has under taken, the retaining Of the Ever glades. The United States govern ment" said Governor Broward, "gave to Florida 20.000,000 acres of land Of that vast area only 3,000,000 is now secured to the state. The rest has been given away, given to railroad companies to canal companies and to l others. And we are trying to keeI them from getting what the state has left and at present we are successful | ly doing it. We have now undertaken | the great task of draining the Ever glades. I firmly and honestly believe
 that the reclaimed lands of the Ever glades have the richest soil in the world. Tn the central lake of the Ever. glades you can take field glass and sweep the horizon. There will be ln l your range of view 1,OO0,000 acres of | land and in all that stretch you can
 see nothing but sour grass.
 This land Is coated with mud from two to twenty feet With the water drawn off, the soil is richer than that est pont the Everglades are only twen ty-four feet above the level of the sea. We propose to dig through the Everglades for their drainage four big canals with cross canals connecting
 them. We are now building two i'm mense dredges for this work and in
 thirty days they will be ready for duty"
 When the Florida Governor had con- cluded his interesting address, Frank V. Evans, of the Alabama Industrial and Immigration Bureau, was presented to the convention. MT. Evans deliv-
 cred a stirring and effective immigra-
 tion talk. It had been charged, he
 said, that the mineral district had
 robbed the agricultural districts of
 Alabama of their negro labor, but he
 said the mineral districts were worse
 off today for labor than the agricultur-
 al districts were and that the indus
 trial plants had proved the negro just
 as deficient a laborer as the farms had.
 The crying need throughout Alabama
 was for intelligent white labor. He
 pointed out that with all her natural
 resources Alabama had only twenty
 five people to the square mile, while Ohio had 125 and Massachusetts 300.
 The night session was devoted to in- formal and interesting talks on indus-
 trial questions affecting the industrial welfare of the South. The speakers
 were Mir H L. Mckee, of Mississippi, Judge O. J. Semmes of Mobile, will liam Dwyer of Mobile, and w L. Hem dersOn of the Southern Railway. MT. Henderson pointed out that the ques- tion before the cane growers was not the making of cane. but the marketing of 1t in a uniform style