The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-05
HOW FORTUNES ARE
 MADE IN REALTY Phenomenal Stories of Leaps in
 Land Values BIRMINGHAM AN EXAMPLE Central Park Now Worth Six Hundred Million DoIlars-Farm Lands In
 the United States Higher
 Than Ever Before.
BIRMINGHAM AN EXAMPLE
BY FREDERIC J. HAsKlN.

BY FREDERIC J. HAsklN.
 One of the surest indications of the widespread prosperity of the United States is to be found in the unheard-of Increase in our real estate values. More fortunes are being made out of land in this country than were ever made in seek ing gold. Some twenty years ago, land booming was a favorite diversion of the get-rlch-qulck gentry. Prices of real es- tate in western states, both city and farm, went up to fabulous figures. Then the bottom dropped out, and the investors were left flattened out under heavy load of mortgages. Now, strange as 1t may seem, the land values in those same boom districts have increased until they are higher than the highest point reached during the boom, and nobody thinks there is anything unusual about it.
 How individual fortunes have been made, or how particular investments have banned out is the burden of the stories one hears among the business men of every American city. In Seattle they tell of a newspaper man who came out west with little hand-press and a big ambi- tion. He started small paper and took almost any kind of advertisements he could get. One advertiser ran up a bill of several hundred dollars before the newspaper man found out he couldn't pay. There was much wrangling, but finally a settlement was effected by the newspaper man giving the delinquent ad- vertiser $250 cash in hand and a receipt for the debt and the editor took a deed to some submerged tde-lands. It was a family joke for years, how the father had been worked, not only for the advertis- ing bill, but for s25o in cash. Recently that same newspaper man sold a very small fraction of his tide-lands for $65,OOO, and is holding the rest against the wiles of rising market
 Land in Webster county Missouri, fif- teen or twenty years ago could be had for nothing If the buyer would assume the mortgage. There were some produc- tive farms in the creek bottoms, but the Ozark foothills were not generally fer tile. Somebody suggested that everybody begin raising apples, because they would grow there. One man planted mortgage on his little farm and bought apple trees. He set them out and waited The fourth year there was big crop.
 A man came along one day just as the apples were beginning to ripen and said: That's a fine orchard; what will you take for it?'' The farmer didn't know, and the stranger offered S6O00. It was such an enormous sum that the farmer almost fell over, but he managed to gasp out an assent to the strangers proposal that they meet in Marshfield on Saturday to fix it up. The farmer went in to see his lawyer on Saturday. well, fix up deed, I've sold my place." "To whom?' the lawyer asked. The farmer told him the strangers name. Great Scott, man; he isn't buying your farm; he's just buy Ing the apples on the trees, and he'll pick 'em himself" And so it was The Eng fish apple buyer had reached Webster county, and apple growing land had in- creased in value ten-fold overnight.
 For the fortunes that have been made in city real estate, like those of the Van derbilt Astor and Rhinelander families in New York, the Silent Jim Smith for tune in Chicago, and others, there are sad stories of bankrupt families who lost their all in the booms. Rooms are going on now, but they are on safer plane than in the eighties real estate in- vestor must be able to wait and wait pa- tiently. When the great Birmingham boom started in the Alabama coal and iron fields in 1882, the Elyton Land company was formed with a capital stock of s10O,- GOO. That stock was not increased, but at the fioodtide it's hundred-dollar shares sold on the open market for $S65o each. Of course Birmingham suffered when the boom busted" but now it has reached the same plane, or a higher one, by the process of natural growth, and every thing that the boomers said about the fu- ture of Birmingham Is being realized. The only thing is-real estate fortunes can not be made In day. Time is necessary.
 After the panic of 1893 the receiver of a bankrupt land and loan company in Kan sas City tried in vain to get 50 cents an acre for vast tracts of Kansas farm lands That same land is now selling for $l0 an acre. and one would be lucky to get much of 1t for that. The average price of Kansas farm lands, improved, in 1900 was Sl6.bl. Five years later, according 10 the government statisticians it had increased to $23.99. In the last two years 1t Is es- tmated that theer has been further in- crease of from 10 to 15 per cent.
 Washington, the capital of the nation, is purely made" town. There Is no commercial excuse for it's existence, and had not the fiat of the federal government brought It into being. there probably would have been nothing worth white east of Georgetown on the banks of the Potomac. The highest price ever paid for real estate in Washington was s76 square foot, recently given for small lot at Fourteenth and F streets, Northwest, where the path of men pursuing politics and pleasure crosses the trail of the women seeking shops and soda water. The whole price of the place was $190,000, the improvements being sothing but an antiquated residence, which was immedi- ately torn down. This lot had been in the Stone family since 1s49. when it and two others of about the same size, were purchased by William J. Stone from Jas per Cope of Philadelphia, for the lump sum of ''three thousand dollars in cur rency money of the United States.
 Two squares further out Fourteenth street Is the old Oxford hotel, purchased fa,. It, TnI