The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-07-09
HECH|NGER WRITES FROM MILWAUKEE Thinks Germans Can Be
 Brought South IS A BEAUTIFUL CITY Farm Developer Is Going to Chicago From Which City 25,00o Set
 tiers Depart Every
 Year
BY s. HECHINGER

noticeables absence of rowdyism; beer and music are boon companions all over the city, yet one scarcely sees drunken man and even during the week of the big Saengerfest, when visitors and citi- zens alike freely indulged in the wettest kind of sociability, the police had scarce ly anything more to do than join in the universal celebration of that memorable Fest" Some of our ardent prohibition ists, who constantly prate about wave of crime following the sale of alcoholic drinks, ought to come up here and look around for a few days. They ought to visit, for instance, the celebrated Palm Garden, where hundreds of men and won- en from the best class of the city's popu- lation, congregate every evening to listen to the strains of Creatores orchestra while slipping their glass of peer. They ought to go around the many public parks and gardens and witness the same thing music and beer and merry making, ana then they might look through the police records in the daily papers and look in vain for any cases of drunkenness and disorderly conduct.
 And be it understood right here that Americans and Germans alike, share in this sort of recreation. The Americans l of Milwaukee have observed the way, and modes of living of the Germans and they have found them good and adopted | them long ago and there are almost as many Americans here understanding the. German language as there are Germans speaking English.
 Milwaukee, indeed is the German Athens of America, with its many beau- tjfuI parks, it's splendid schools and H. braries, it's magnificent churches art in stitutes and museums and 1t is prosper nd haDnV l found wanting; that is the climate. Talk about the hot weather in the south. Dur ing the week of the Saengerfest the teni- perature here reached from 9o to l02 in the shade Even the mighty Lake Michi- gan forget to send a breeze and every one of the singers who stuck to lis post and went to sing upon that hot bed of stage in the big auditorium during the five concerts should have received a medal for herosm.
 l Yet in spite of that torrid heat the singers acquitted themselves magnificent ly and the Fest" was great artistic success, duly appreciated by an immense audience who also deserved great credit for not letting the intense heat interfere with their love of music and song.
 Thirty-hve hundred singers on the stage and an audience of 5000 enthusiastic men
 and women were truly an inspiring and
 
 they all, singers and audience, were per- spring. Every cloud has it's silver lin- ing" however, as one of our Bir1ninS- ham boys expressed it. The intense heat wetted the appetite for Schlitz and Papst that much more-made these beverages so much more delectable, especially to those singers who came from prohibition states and our Birmingham boys sure made use of the opportunity.
 of Oli in ho papers that the whole country IS suffer- ing with an unprecedented spell of heat except the south, yet l have to answer continuously the query about the hot weather in the south and find it hard 10 convince homeseekers that we actually have cooler weather through the summer months than the central northern and western states.
 Prospective homeseekers, here are plenty to be found here One scarcely would think that Germans would desire to leave the city of Schlitz and Pabst- city whose social life resembles that | of Germany as near as it can be possible outside of the Fatherland yet 5ucn is the case The desire for better opportunities than are found in populated district like l this, is stronger than the love for even the accustomed mode of life. have also met quite a number of people living Tn
  kee They tell me that land within 20 miles of Milwaukee is very expensive being valued from $500 to s1GO0 an acre. and that cheap land further away is poor | and without proper transportation tacil- | ities They tell me too,i that the sec | tions in. which they live are sort of Set | tied Down." That Is that there Is no | chance for progress and development and | what l told them about the Birmingham | district sounds good to them. l am quite sure that next fall a number of settlers will come down from Milwaukee and vii cinity. Here, as everywhere throughout the north, west and east, there is a big | field to procure a good class of settlers for | the south. Hundreds of men from this | neighborhood have gone to Canada and | for no other reason than that Canada has sought them, solicited them through lit- | erature and agents. When will the peo- pie of the south awaken to -heir great | possibilities and realize that the work to get settlers is the most important they | can possibly undertake; that everything, | capital, industry and labor will follow | the settler and that every. dollar they | spend in the carrying on of such work | will return to them hundred fold. Can | ada has realized all this long ago and | hence it gets the people. The work of inducing settlers to come | south is yet almost exclusively carried I on by railroads and colonization coni- | panies. A few of the southern states | made some lulxewarm efforts in that di- | rection, appropriating a few thousand | dollars for such purposes and put the work in charge of politicians vino drew salaries as reward for past services to the reigning administration and succeed ed in mudding up things in general to such an extent that the mere word i'm migration" became a synonym for hiln1- bug to the southern people. Again a number of the colonization companies l were and are today outrageous swindlng concerns, whose nefarious business brings untold harm to the south and cetards the work of real progress and development. | I am not speaking, of course, Of those companies who buy large tracts of good l land and populate the same with real set- tiers; but of those concerns who handle a lot of swamp land and sand 6unes and sell them to their victims as orange groves | and the like. 1 have met here in Milwau- kee several of such deluded victims, Nho lhad just returned from Florida and to whom now, of course, the south Js notn- ing but a hot bed of deceit and swampy wilderness There is no question but what the southern states should band to- gether and make laws to stop this ne- farous business perpetrated by northern land sharks.
 But I swerved away off. As indicated booklets and talked with considerable