The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-02-15
FOREIGNERS AND THE ...-s
 S0UTH'S LABOR PROBLEM

Westerners are coming. It is new
 soil to them. They have to. become ac-
 quainted with it--to understand US pc culiarities--to Know how 1t agrees with this plant or that. plant, to know what feed and care the land requires. some of them never understand this and fail- ure is their part. Others do and are making money in spite of the fact that
 the peopling of the pine lands with <Westerners is yet In a pioneer stare
 and the men who come are by force
 of circumstances compelled to i've tne pioneer life.
 The Bag Companies.
 The Southern States Lumber Com pany. that gigantic corporation, which took away most of the fortunes that were cut away with the yellow pine lumber of Baldwin County. was the parent organization of the big conn panies which are doing the land and 1 immigration work in Baldwin. When this company had shipped it's colossal yellow pine riches out of the harhors | of Mobile and Pensacola, the tracts of l land over which their woods gang passed remained to them useless and ! an encumbrance
 Some Chicoga business man, skilled l in business affairs and keen In he out look for business opportunities, saw | LNt CAAAuEG. 1HCh tAAeC 0otA6 | the Southern Plantation and Develop { ment Company, the Baldwin County I Land and Colonization Company, the | Magnolia Springs Land Company and | the Svea Colony Company. The former company. the Southern Plantation and Development Company
 is the company Of T. F. Ham the Chi-
 cago capitalist who got an early start ! in Baldwin and had a part in several
 of it's various enterprises, The com pany accumulated 92.000 acres of land | for immigration and exploitation. Its I town is the town of Robertsdale, a place which somehow got the jump on the other towns along the Bay Minette and Fort Morgan Railroad and which
 after eight or nine months of life is | proud in the possession of half dog
 on stores, 8 hotel, canning factory. and a wood working plant. The Baldwin County Colonization | Company has it's headquarters at El- berta, promising settlement six miles l east of Foley, the present terminus of the railroad. In this company's $ l tract there were originally 53,000 acres I of land. Their settlers are largely of German descent. the whole settlement has a German air. although it's people
 are largely from the environs of of Chi- cago.
 l How They Come. 1 The Magnolia Springs Land Company
 is 'Feley's Company" He is the man who made pine, honey and tar famous I as remedy. He owned between 35.0o0 and 40, 900 acres when he began to sell land and bring in immigrants. His land lies between the terminal station I of Foley and the winter ] resort of
 Magnolia Springs.
 The Svea Colony Company is Swed- ish organization and Swedes are the l in They qynnH 1 pine wood farmers, these Swedes, and l their colony town at Silver Hill is one I of the neatest, -cleanest and apparent ] ly one of the most prosperous in South l Alabama. The company had 50,000
 acres. practically all of which has been
 sold.
 They say in Baldwin County that
 5000 families have been brought in by l the land companies in the past four l years The estimate may or may not
 be too high. On train from Mont- 1 gomerey to Mobile there were no less I than 250 homeseekers from the Middle 1 West going to take look on Bald l win. It is said that half of these l quick trip tourists buy lands. An agent of one of the companies who had in charge twenty of these trippers told
 me he sold land to eleven out of the
 twenty.
 In the past year the land companies | have advanced prices rom 20 to 20 per
 cent. No land is sold by the companies
 now for less than S20 an acre. Much
 of 1t is held as high as $S5. So fast
 as this is the development of Southern l Baldwin.
 The land goes in small tracts. Not
 often is so much as eighty acres sold
 in one body The usual sale, E of forty I acres.
 1 Vegetables form the popular crop. l In one way or another the small far mer depends upon the production and vegetables runs from asparagus to pe- | cans, if one Is liberal enough to class | oceans as a vegetable.
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