The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-01-01
pY WILL T. sHEEHAN.

E i. The State has depended 30 much on ] agriculture, even as the South has. that l the sections further north. favored by ] partial and sectional Congressional leg l islation, have drawn the most of the
 drafts which have been honored by
 prosperity. In this condition of it's commercial
 iuportance. the double headed city on ! the Tennessee resembles more the i Northern manufacturing center than I 1t does Southern city. whose lines of ] trade reach out to farms and fields. shops, railroads and factories are the contributors to the present prosperity !, If the Decaturs. The twin cities of | t5.ooo population stand as a monument
 to the industrially constructive value | of railroad.
 Before the rnodernisation of the first railroad ever built in Alabama. the | line from Tuscumbia to Decatur, and l before the construction of the main line tof the Louisville and Nashville Raii- ] road, Decatur was merely srsaa town built up on the tracks or the Tennes-
 1 see dependent upon the river trame I to any from the fine Tennessee Valley I plantations, for the plantation system
 1 prevailed as strongly in the Tenresses
 Il Valley as 1t ever did in the Canebraks
 and the Black Belt to the South.
 H It remained for the railroads to put
 Il the crown upon Decatur's industrial
 | growth. and this they did in the erec- ! tior of the great general shops of the
 | Louisville and Nashville. The shops
 ] form the biggest item of all Decatur's 1 riches. They constitute the best sim
 gle asset of Decatur. and of Morgan 1 County.
 I The man who rushes by them on s 1 Pullman car can not grasp an ade' quate Idea of their magnitude and im- l portance. He can not understand that i they cover no less than ffty-seven I acres of ground. He doesn't know that they make twenty-five cars In these shops every two days. And car mak- | ing Is only one feature of the big en- terprise. Practically every part of. a l Locomotive is made In that ffty-seven acre hive of industry.
 Employ 2,500 w0r1xmen.
 The average Alabamian doesn't know l that the employees at these car shops | number at all times something hke l 2,500 workmen The pay roll foots up every month to more than s1o0,0oo' and some of the men whose names are on the pay rolls are among the most skilled and intelligent workmen of the entire country. The cheapest labor in the great industry .raws sI2o. It IS l not uncommon for skilled workmen to draw $s and $10 day Some few of 1 the men are said to make even higher wages Skill and efficiency win money and reward wherever they make them selves felt and such an industrial en- terprise as these huge shops depends for its success upon the brain, the training and the efficiency of the men who labor with hand and brain at the iathes and the machines. l Of a certainty such men are good cit fzens and prosperity builders or any community to which their labor may
 call them. They are home makers. too It is the distinguishing character or these skilled workmen in the Decatur shops-their disposition to buy and own their own homes. They have some beautiful places. too. Tn fact in the matter of physical beauty, New Decatur need not fear comparison with any of the older az ] rieuiturai cities of the State, although
 1t Is an industrial center, which orai, lnariIy means noise, smoke, hustle and confusion. But this is not true of De- catur, with its broad, shaded streets, I Its curving drives, its vlna covered | homes and its tidy yards.
 O A City of the Future. fl 1 Mayor E. C. Gordon and the men | who helped him to launch the new t,,tv had an eve on the future when they mapped and laid off the town of | New Decatur where a cotton field had I heen. The streets were made broad, elevations and depressions were consid- cred and a city beautiful of the future planned. A great circular driveway l known as Gordon Drive runs through | and around the city on the hill.
 Tn full dreams of the founders and
 promoters of New Decatur have not yet been realized, but they have come nearer their fruition at Decatur than similar dreams entertained by boom CTS" in any other Alabama towns, with the single exception of Birmingham Ttetda and far into the woods the lands have been plotted and | laid of in lots. friend of mine de- clared that while he was driving through wood two miles from the heart of the city, his buggy ran against l an obstruction and he discovered that
 he had strucfs water plug or tne clty of New Decatur. He learned further that he had been driving along one Of the streets of the city, thing he had not known until he was told or It. | Certain of the plotted suburbs nave
 been handsomely ornamented with modern dwellings,, with yards ana lawns which would be decorative to
 Birmingham and Mobile The city mas simply grown up in many different nlaces and for one reason or another, | inc growth has skipped certain other | nlaces. So the city of New Decatur has such fine suburbs as Austinviiie' West Decatur. Fairview and Aoulton Heights.
 Being a far flung city-a city whose parts are not closely linked, is immed- | late evidence that Decatur started as a boom town Anniston has the same characteristic. In both cities. Tor no apparent reason, sandwiched in.. some l times between impressive business buildings and sometimes sandwicned between handsome city residences. are lots encircled by splendid and modern paving. but which have no ornamenta- ton other thar. weeds and pile or warrant brick.
 The vacant lots such as these stamp the boom town. when there was more
 real estate speculation in North Ala hama than there is cotton speculation today Some of tho lots were bought
 at an inflated figure. When the gen eral boom collapsed, the owners round themselves with the lots on their hands and no direct means of getting back the heavy price they had paid Tor them.
 Owners Hold Property
 Many of these owners, have preferred to hold the lots and let nature take it's course. Thy have preferred to hold the lots and recover thelr money
 through the great natural development
 of the Alabama towns and cities which have undergone the fever of Doom' but they are watching the price of their boom bought lot steadily grow under the influence of a development from natural resources and industrial pros perIty particularly so is this Of the boom lots in such towns as Annlston. and Decatur, where progress has played nd