The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1915-01-15
BRIGHTER TIMES AHEAD.

Those of us who SCI only dark forebodings as to business forl
the future should stop Just a little while and consider what confront
ed the South lust after the Civil War. Outside of the immeasurable
disaster that had come to our people because OF a tour years war
which had been carried on within our borders, the negroes, who mad
been the chief source of farm labor, were freed, our people were I'M
povenshed, there was little money to be loaned and less collateral
held by those who needed to borrow, and hundreds OF other oeset
nents that make a picture that the mind rebels at lingering on s'li
the fight was made and our fathers conqured and gave u S what wei
have to-day. The present situation is ten thousand times better
yea, a hundred Thousand times better, than that which the farmsrs|
and everybody else in the South had to face then. Thus it is that al
glance backward should make is brave and bouyant for the present.
Again, let the mind travel across the waters and contemplate, III
YOU please, the condition of the peoples of the warning countries OF
Europe. If it takes a yard stick to measure our faces, what should
be required to measure theirs - surveyors cham would De 'nsumc-
Thanks to our Creator, no pesulence or epidemic has visited u.s.
We have had years of sunshine, good crops, a most delightful eli
mate and a soil that will produce everything necessary to sustain the
human body. If we have wasted our substance in rotous Oh extrava
giant living. it is our fault and ours alone. All these things being
true, there is but one course open to Is IS a sensible, brave and hon
est people and that is to recast our business lines cut expenses and
apply our best energies and our best talents to the immediate future
Our Creator has done His part and continues to favor u.s. the resut
depends upon what we do.
In this connection we are reminded of the disaster and the de-
noraization that existed in Florida after the great freeze a few years
back ahsn that STATE lost sIoooooooo on its fruit crop, including the
killing of many thousand of valuable trees. Florida is now in a
more prosperous condition than ever before in its history. What
those people did then is what the cotton belt section needs to do
now. From a recent issue of the Manufacturers Record we quote
the following regarding Florida after the disastrous freez. which
should furnish a lesson to our people and give them new hope and
increased determination:
And the new Florida is mighty advance over the old Flori-
da. Prosperity is more general; towns and cities have been build
ing with a rapidity which they had not known under the old con-
ditions before the freeze; diversified agriculture is growing every
where in Florida; the citrus-fruit industry has been more than re-
stored, and what at one time looked like a tremendous disaster to
that State has worked out to be a great blessing, because it stimu-
lated the people of Florida to show what they could do, and now
the world sees what they have done.
The cotton region of the South is coming to its senses; it Twill
soon get over the hysteria for which the politicians were to a con
siderable extent responsible, and it will buckle down to hard bust
ness and redeem itself by achieving more than it would have ac-
complished if there had been no war. But it ought to buckle
down to the jop Immediately"
A prominent business man of Florida makes this statement
about what Fioridians did after that disaster:
'Our Florida people did not lay OWL on their DaCks WITH
+beirl eos and arms in the air. calling for federal help or state
helm. or any old help that they could get, but they got right down
and orubbed and they made a new Florida out of what was left"
1t takes a trying period to bring out that which is highest ant
best in a people. By proper business effort and a wise direction o
our farming interests we can use the present as a spr'ng-board TO
the future.