Panama City pilot., 1908-08-13

they might bein knowing of the bust
ness conditions down there.
Briefly, Panama City is place with
future, a glorious future, too, we
believe. It's past is simply unimpor
tant history. It's present is a rawness
and to he who sees it only as it is
now is like to prove discOuraging if
not disheartening. To begin with,
there is no town there in the ordinary
sense Of the word and what there is
so hidden by the uncut trees as to
be almost invisible. Let us not be
misunderstood when we say there is
no town. A town is, generally speak
ing a community made up most largely
of residences with business houses
occupying a secondary place as far
as numbers are concerned, at least,
with streets between them cleared
out and the whole, so far as the bust
ness portion is concerned, reasonably
compactly built Here the business
{ uOuScS OulIlulnUCI lliC ICSltCHOCo VI
at least equal them. Between them
are expanses of uncut scrub.
To put it in an other way, the town
is at present tOp-heavy. There are
too many business houses in opera
ton and in course of erection for the
population and in proportion to the
4 70 1.-Two - nj &c
the question, such houses as are built
renting for about So per month per
roOm-that is, a three room house
rents for S15 per month. For the man
who would board conditions are al
most as bad. The boarding places
have been compelled to rent rooms
over stores and such like places and
fill every nook and corner available
with cots.
And yet this city in embryo has a
newspaper office where is printed
the handsOmest paper in West Florida,
a bank cramped for quarters, it is
true, but seemingly doing a good
business; a restaurant that would do
credit to places much more preten-
tiOus, and a thirty-tOn ice factory;
bOttling works for soft drinks, and an
air of hustle and go about it all that
would make some other places in this
end of the state look like stage coach
by the side of limited train, and its
going, too.
The railroad is just completed, or
rather placed in that condition that
makes it possible to run trains at a
slow speed to within halfmiie of the
town. The real terminus in town and
tie depot are yet of the future. SO
is the wharf that is to be built out
into the bay so that the steamers can
come alongside of it and unload their
cargOes for the interior which for the
present must be hauled some distance,
and likewise load the freights that
surely will come from the large section
of west Florida, southeast Alabama
and southwest Georgia that are just
as surely tributary to this port as that
water rims down hill. Over two
million of the ten to twelve million
? bales of cotton produced in the
United States are grown in a section
that is nearer tide water here than
anywhere else. Think what that
means when deep water has been
secured from the most land-lOcked
harbOr in the south to the gulf, and
remember that it will cost but very
little, comparatively, to secure that
deep water, and also that q survey is
being made for that purpose. Cotton
is but one item, also.
With these natural conditions as a
basis, and a live and progressive
citizenship, Panama City is going to
be a city and that not very far off.
For the present the greater part of
the talk is about the tourists, the fish
and the fishing, but these are but in
cidepts; they are G.mzy Foundation
upon which to build a city, and those
who are building know it, and while
others talk they work, and the result