The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-04-29
IEyANTINES SUPPLANTING THE NEGRO
 -~-. x. IN VARIOUS FIELDS IN GULF STATES

all the big industrial plants and in miscellaneous employments. Many of the Italians and Hungarians who are , arriving in the country go into this work. but the Greeks, Syrians, and some other Eevantines prefer not to work for wages. but seek business openings which give scope for their trading and bartering instincts. The population of Birmingham has grown so fast that even the industry and enterprise of these new people have not been able to keep pace with the demand for foodstuffs. Taken for the year through. fully ninety-five per cent. of all the foodstuffs consumed there by human beings and animals are brought in from other States. Yet cheap lands are near at hand on which these supplies could be readily grown, and 1t seems incredible that the ne- groes have not taken hold of the truck ing business and made fortunes out of it's profits. The Greeks who have gone into it have become independent in a few years.
 Levantine immigrants are now be- ing landed at New Orleans and Gal weston direct from the Mediterranean ports in steamship loads. On the arri- val of each ship there is lively compe- tition on the part of employers of la bor in Mississippi Louisiana. Texas. Arkansas and Alabama to secure the services of these people, and each car go of human freight Is, figuratively. gobbled up before 1t reaches the wharf. Some of them go to work for wages in various public works; some go as hired hands on the plantations. while others still become tenants to farm on shares. and small minority buy land and start at once on their own hook. In each pursuit they show themselves equal to the situation, and make steady and pronounced Leadway. The next year they are joined by rel atives and friends from the old coun- try, and so 1t goes on from year to year, the tide of newcomers increas- ing as correct information about the real advantages of the country, the climate and the soil is spread abroad among the people.
 Even from the port of New York some of the Latins are making forthe South as soon as they arrive, and the aggregate of arrivals is beginning to tell on the general character and in- stitutions of the gulf section. These people became an important factor whenever they settle down, and 1t is very clear from the points of vantage they are pre-empting that they havo some pretty definite ideas on the i'm portaAt part their race Is going to play in that region in the time to come.
 One does not need to strain the im- agination very much to realize that, with the Panama Canal an accomplish ed fact. the gulf will rapidly become the greatest highway of maritime com merce in the world. There will be no other part of the globe where steamships can be coaled as cheaply as on the shores of Alabama. where the mines in barges which can dis. charge their cargoes into the bunkers of the thousands of merchantmen which will halt there for their fuel. The government Improvements on the Warrior and Tombigbee rivers are al- ready completed to the southern edge of the Warrior coal field, and by the time the Panama Canal is completed these rivers will be open to naviga- ton from Mobile bay to within few miles of the city of Birmingham.
 From present appearances the pop ulation of Birmingham by that time will be at least 100000, and fully nine tenths of the labor employed in the great iron and steel industries there will be white The fisheries of the gulf will be rapidly built up by the expert fishermen from the Levant. and most of the activities of the gulf zone will be in their hands. A new Mediterran- can, with a vast polygot population on It's north shore. almost a counterpart of that of Southern Europe. will have been established there. and that region