The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-20
SOUTH BACKWARD
 IN ADVERTISING What West Has Won By Use
 of Printers Ink DO NOT BOOST OURSELVES Ten of the Biggest Magazines This Month Have Feature Articles De. voted to the Wonders of
 the West.
DO NOT BOOST OURSELVES
BY BURR BLAcKBU RN.

 Though the old south has long ago de- Veloped into realization of Henry Grady's vivid picture, the scent of the roses still fingers around the home of the
 veteran and in the eyes of the world the
 bright, energetic, ambitious new south"
 is yet a boy in his teens.
 It seems to be hard for the son to over come the precedent which has been estab- lished by his father. He isn't known
 for his real value. He needs advertis- ing.
 The south isn't getting her share in
 the advertising of the United States. While Georgia is winning national fame for strikes against negro firemen, Mis-
 sissippi for the number of lynchings she can pull off, Tennessee and Alabama for | their trial of new schemes to kill business, the west, "the golden west" is smearing
 her glory over every signboard, shout
 ing her beauties and her advantages from every magazine, and instead of spending
 her money for special sessions of legis- | latures, for attorneys fees in railroad l expressions and the drawing up of en- | clycopedas, Is using it by the thousands 1 to tell the people of the world the oppor- tunities of reclaimed deserts, sun | scorched prairies and snow-covered moun- l tain peaks.
 | Take this months magazines, for ex- | ample. Ten of the biggest of them have 1 feature stories beautifully illustrated about the west. Golfers runs a "Golden Empire Number" and there are stories
 glaring at the reader in every periodical l he picks up, westward the Course of Empire Goes." "The Worlds Fruit Bas-
 ket" poems on "The Spirit of California" and even boosts for Reno, the Refuge of l Restless Hearts"
 | They would have you believe that God made the west and then slapped on the | rest to make it round. They brag by the column about certain sections because l rain doesn't fall the year round and | about others because it is fresh and ex- | hilarating and rain falls almost every | day.
 | But in spite of that there is a peculiar | harmony about their boosting They count l you up in hog lots and figure on jusr any | scheme. to get you west. They never l knock one section for it is all divided up | into separate departments of heaven on
 earth. They all agree that you'll like | Tacoma" and You'll i've Seattle" Just
 come on over with your wife and fam fly and your money
 Oregon spends hundreds of dollars in magazine and other advertising. Portland | spends more in one year than Birming ham does in five on publicity. They don't l take up collections to build southern halls | of congress in Washington, but they have l grabbed the best medium at hand for reaching the human cerebellum and are pumping it so full that there Is little room for anything else.
 The average person in another section | thinks of the south as the land of the | plantation, the negro, the lynching and | the battle field. They would come south I to see the field at Chiekamauga or Shi- | loh. They don't know better because | they haven't been told. I heard of a northern school teacher the other day who | listened to an address by a southern or | ator well known in Birmingham, and the next day told her pupils what brilliant l speech Stonewall Jackson had made. l | ago to the fact that she couldn't get along alone Then she went to work bringing in foreign immigration The west spurned 1 the foreigner from her door, and inaugu- rating a whirlwind campaign for native> American citizens, has in one decade built an empire on eastern and southern brains
 The magazine writers, with their thou sands of columns, are pouring millions of people and dollars into the west. The south Is left almost in the cold. when the Baltimore Sun features the Presi- dents trip 1t gets him as far as Dallas, describing all the wonders and industries which he will see. and then simply states that he Twill arrive in Washington in a few days" Of course, there is a pilgrim
 like the Manufacturer Record, scat tered here and there, that puts in a siren note, but 1t is drowned in a whirlwind of western sand
 And the truth of the business is, and everybody in the south knows 1t, that the south is the best place for the small farmer the truck gardener, the fruit grower the chicken raiser, the merchant, the manufactures.
 The commercial organizations of Ala bama will hold a meeting in Birmingham next month and this is one of the prob lems which they will have to meet. They recognize that the good of one county is the good of the whole state, and that it Is time for a general rising up and shouting out, Come downi Come down!'
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