The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-09-16
GIVES HIS IDEAS ON
GETTING SETTLERS
Clay County Man Points Out
Some of the Things Ala
bama Must Do
To the Editor Of The Age-Herald.

To the Editor of The Age Herald
Your land congress can do most good
for Alabama by bringing farmers from
the north, and especially the northeast.
Men who can take hold of an so or a
quarter section of land and build a home
on it, and make farm of it and do
general farming of the kind those people
are accustomed to, only modified to suit
the climate.
Alabama offers a very inviting field
to the stock raiser. But northern farm
er seeing Alabama from the car win
dows would not think so. Brown hedge
and coarse weeds and bushes do not prom
ise cattle pasture or to winter forage eth
er. On those the ability to raise stock and
fatten them for market depends But show
such farmer field of alfalfa or soy beans
or peas ard pasture set in bermuda
and he would be impressed Such sight
would appeal to him instantly. At the
fair last fall 1 saw the best assortment
OF winter forage plants ever beheld any
where, and If the fair people had on their
grounds well set pasture of bermuda
an acre of soy beans four feet high.
good pea field, and an alfalfa field all
growing, they would do Alabama more
good than any amount of glib talking
because the men Alabama needs are
practical farmers and nothing but facts
before their faces and eyes will convince
such. They are shrewd men and mere
CAB goes in at one ear and out at the
other. 1t will not do Alabama a bit of
good to bring a lot of land spectators
to gobble up our cheap lands and hold
them for rise in price. Such would be
curse and a blight. What is needed
is colonies of farmers settled together
so they may be neighbors to one another.
People who do their own work and won't
wait for niggers to do it for them. Such
settlements would grow marvelously and
would at once attract others, and be the
very best advertisement possible
The only objections to the lower south
are malarial diseases and bad water in
some places otherwise very desirable. But
whore then overcomes the latter objec-
tion, and screening out mosquitoes dis
poses of the other Since 1t is well proven
that the kind of musquito which carries
malaria bites at night only Panama has
demonstrated that it is not only possible
but practicable for white men to work
and be healthy in one of the worst pest
holes in the tropics, and why not in Ala
bama?
Already western men are looking this
way. | got letter a few weeks ago
from a man in Colorado induiring about
cutover timber land to use for a sheep
ranch.
Your land congress might take a hint
from the way Coils b. Huntington of the
Pacific railroad, started emigration to
California 40 years ago, and stocked that
state with first rate settlers from the
north.
Men who had capital and skill and ex-
perfence as gardeners fruit raisers and
stock men, as well as general farming
an exceptionally high grade of citizens
who have placed California where she is
at the head in all those industries To
be sure California had the natural re-
sources in plenty. But natural resources
are nothing without the right kind of men
to develop them and most certainly Ala
oama has as good things to offer settlers
as any state on the Pacific coast But
the world does not know it, Besides you
must remember that the average western
farmer thinks Alabama is only fit place
for niggers and cotton. SO you must
overcome his prejudices and his ignorance
by letting him with his eyes what
Alabama can do when she is given a
chance.
Furthermore, If YOU did but know it the
fact that fully half the white citizens of
Alabama are disfranehised is a very bad
advertisement of our state, and too vain
to try and explain it away by the usual
sophistry. To outsiders the fact remains,
and they have very clear ideas as to
what that means under a governmental
system, such as ours, and what it might
mean to him and his were their lives, lib
critics and property in jeopardy in the
courts. Besides the citizen (of Anglo
Saxon stock especially likes to know
what becomes of money he pays in taxes
and is sure'to register a kick If it is squan-
dered or stolen. Such men as have in
mind would rather brave the blizzards Of
Manitoba or the drought of Arizona than
oligarchal system of government. Respect
fully, JOSHUA FRANKLIN,
Pyriton Clay county, Alabama, septem-
Der Is, 1918.