The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1916-11-11

coin thru the other fellows back wind
ow. Funny, the other business men in
/, town can't do like the bankers.
The party went in T. T. Munroe's
big car, Mr.. Munroe shovering. Bank
ers used to be usurers and see nothing
but shekels. These days they are
/ looking at every other business and if
! it is a good business they encourage
lit. One of the things that pleases
Mr.. Munroe is to take bunch of ap-
lpreciative friends in his big car and
go see farm, manufacturing enter
prise, road or something else that
makes for the betterment of the
icCunty and state where he makes his
home. We have been with him on sew
eral of these joy rides and are always
Iready for another.
The small excursion referred to had
a rapid and easy. trip along the north
road, thru the pretty and prosperous
villages of Anthony and Sparr and
the miles of fertile farmland that go
with them, and on until within cou-
IPle of miles of Citra, when they turn
led to the right, crossed the Seaboard
and soon after came to an orderly
collection OF large new buildings
which made the plant of the Florida
| Peat Products Company, which is de-
veloping this great Marion county re-
source.
! As the car stopped, Capt. Robert
| A. Alfred came to meet Us. Capt.
| Alfred has bossed the building and is
Inow bossing the operations of the
i plant. We all know Captain Alfred,
and he is a man worth knowing. He
is one of the men who do things. As
you can see by his name he is a de-
scendant of the greatest of Saxon
kings. The breed of kings soon runs
out if it keeps on Ringing, but the AL
| freds had better luck. Losing thru
no fault of their own their job as
kings, they went to bossing kings,
which is better. They became prime
ministers, executors, powers behind
the throne, occasionally picking up
the throne and setting it down some
where else, if it's first location didn't
suit them. Captain Alfred has been
bossing jobs ever since he was big
boy, and he meyer was little boy
He is about three axhandles high and
| broad in proportion, and wears
mustache and vest. He wears other
things of course, but in these, he
differs in garb from ordinary men.
You may not have noticed it, but all
the men who did big things in the old
days, the engineers, the ship captains,
the cowboys, those who kept power in
harness and brushed danger aside
with contemptuous indifference, al
ways wore vests. In the days of chiv-
airy, the vest was one of mans most
important garments. Later on, it be-
came the most useful. It held cigars,
! pencils, memorandum books and other
things that a herman always needs.
It's going out now because the home
/ is either becoming so burned fash
ionable or is becoming transmogrifed
into a boarding house. Man, poor
man, must wear coat at his meals,
and since he can't wear both coat and
vest six months in the year, the vest
and his. convenience must go. Mean
while large numbers of the ladies,
metaphorieally speakers, are appro-
priating more distinctly masculine
garment and the "sexionalo line is
becoming more and more wiggly and
/ indistinct
But we digress. As aforesaid, Cap
| tain Alfred came to meet the party
and showed them the plant. The
place to begin inspecting and describ-
ing an object of any sort from a
needle up to an universe is the begin
ming. So we began in this instance at
the cause, which was big bed of
peat, obscured from view however by
la sheet of water. Geography says
the earth is composed of land and wa
ter, and if the geographers had stuck
in sentence right there to explain
| that in some places those components
were muchly mixed they would save
the scholars some surprises in the
future.
Land and water is more or less
equally mingled at the Meadows. One
of those industrial battleships called
a dredge squatted like an immense
duck in pond which it had dug out
with its own BILL
The dredge had just been completed
and had it's trial trip the day before
the party arrived. 1t worked most
successfully, digging up the peat at
the rate of $50 cubic yards an hour.
When the dredge is in operation,
there is always a barge alongside of
it, and as the dredge buckets scoop up
the peat they go up an elevator chain,
carrying the peat to a macerator that
rises like a fighting top from the
deck of the dredge. The macerator
tears the peat to pieces, makes pulp
of it and sends it on down into the
barge. When the barge it full, it is
toWed to another elevator at the mar
gin of the pond, and this elevator
loads the peat into cars, which run it
out on an inclined railway and dumps
I 1T on the oproJInd There Is lies for q