The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1914-10-09
and the writer shall have been II
Ocala full fifty years.

Ocala full fifty years.
During those years he has concen-.
trated his energies to the building up
of the city and county.
He can say very truthfully that the
sound of hammer, saw and trowel
has been as music in his ears.
He has rejoiced in every brick that
has been laid, in every step of prog
ress than has been made, but when
he beholds the growth that has been
made in other cities and counties,
vastly less favored of nature. he feels
that his task has almost been THANK
less and fruitless one.
Away back yonder-nearly fifty
years ago-when he first came to
Ocala, it possessed in the way of
manufactures four cotton ginning es-
Establishments, some of them operating
five and six cotton gins. 1t had two
! tanneries. 1t had shoe factory that
employed more than a dozen work
men. 1t had two large saw mills. 1t
| had harness shop, one in which sad
dies complete were manufactured. 1t
had wagon factories and blacksmith
shops. 1t had hotels and boarding
| houses.
| 1t occurs to dishonest Injun"-
that there were more white farmers
in the county than there are now.
This seems especially true of the
Shady Grove, Long Swamp, st. Johns
and Pennington neighborhoods.
There are now fitting through his
memory the names of whole host
of white farmers who have gone, and
no remnants of their having lived here
/ exist.
1t is remembered that there were
imported into the county in a single
year as many as one thousand labor
ers to work in the cotton fields.
| We thought it nothing extravagant
to predict that within fifty years we
could safely count on a population of
one hundred and fifty thousand in
town and county-but what do we
find as the fruits of our efforts?
The population of the county, out
side of the little towns, is really no
more than it was fifty years ago. and
the federal census gives Ocala pop
ulation so small that we have hardly
the courage to parade the figures in
print.
We have not only never had an axe
| to grind, but have never at any time
ground as much as a pen-knife on the
public grindstone, yet when we advo-
cate measures purely to promote the
growth and uplift of the community,
to say the least, the motives prompt
| ing the same are not met with out
bursts of approval, and the town lags,
as it has been doing for fifty years.
Can one blame us sometimes for
growing faint-hearted and discourag-
ed?
We have doomed and boosted the
town and county, and all the while
keeping strictly within the lines of
truth, plenteously enough to have
built city of fifty thousand popula-
| ton and a population in the county
correspondingly large; yet what do
we find today?
:, A population in the city less than
the number of printers employed in
the government printing office in
Washington City.
Heartsick and weary, shall we lay
down on the job and quit?
Shall we join with those for whom
we have exhausted our energies to
benefit, and say to the citizens of
Ocala, vote against every measure of
| improvement and see that the town
with it's splendid advantages and vast
possibilities, shall lag behind and be
outclassed by other towns with vast
| ly less advantages, and cry out in bit.
terness and anguish of spirit as one
| said aforetime whose shoe-latchets
we are unworthy to fasten:
20, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that
killest the prophets, and stonest them
which are sent unto thee, how oft
would l have gathered thy children
together. even as a hen gathereth her
IL. IL