The Republican journal., 1916-07-13
Dividends in Hot Air.
One of the Cruelest OF Recent Land Frauds,
Practised by Northerners Upon Northern
ers in Useless Southern Acres.

Practised by NOrtherners Upon Northern
ers in Useless Southern Acres.
JW. F. Thayer in the Boston Transcript
Fer the past few years the newspapers
throughout the country have been full of
Back to the Farm" talk, partly on ac-
count of the high cost of living, and be-
cause of the overcrowded cities. Many
sharp, unscrupuious men saw their oh ance
to do" their friends and acquaintance
and get rich quick by starting In the
land business and thus take advantage of
all this free advertising. And many have
succeeded Hundreds have gone into the
land business, their firms entitled most
attractively. with Blue Sky pictures taken
thousands of miles away from the land
they intend to sell. and do SELL, Their
literature spread broadcast expresses
wonders in the superative. One strange
fact stands out prominent; these land
men who see such great chances in the
South, are as rule Northern or Eastern
men. Not Southerners, who know bet
ter. The great chance for gain is for
the sellers, surely not the buyers
In every city there are many people
along in years that have endured life's
hardships. who are DESTROYS of living on
easier lines, say, IN climate which never
experiences a sub-zero, or even that of
the freezing point, climate where one
may live In Gods great out of doors
twelve months in the year. These peo-
pie are the doctors, lawyers, preachers,
teachers, merchants, as well as those
not numbered in the professions, all
dreaming of such conditions, with a
snug little bungalow, ten or twenty
of itL
vegetables, fruit and flowers, and even
three or more crops year. Our advice
to those laboring under this dreamy
deluslon of rest and ease coupled with
luxury is to turn over and wake up, and
not get caught mapping as hundreds have
In the past to their pecunary loss and
mental anguish.
My actual experience in living and
working down there, touching elbows
with the city and country life, working
In the fields with the colored and white
help, driving wagons, spraying, fertillz-
ing and banking trees, hoeing, burning
brush and digging stumps, is just as l
am writing lt-simpy actual facts, IN
the hope that they will be warning to
many in the North, East and West.
The Plan of Attack.
The way these Gland sharks operate
is as follows: Three or four parties
get together and purchase several thou
sand acres of rotten cut-over pine lands,
'soggy and DOGGY, full of stumps and
dreary small pines. These Attractive
acres they procure for the sum of three
to live dollars an acre, plot the area and
give it name which sounds allurlng and
toI aI-
advertise it with beautiful pictures of
fruit trees, vegetables, homes and drives
that you cannot find when you get there,
and put this on the market to their
friends on ground floor" price of $40
per acre. Yes, all the officers of the
company from the president down, who
may live in New York, to the secretary
and treasurer, who may live in the West,
have piece of this forty dollar land
that cost them five. Listen to them.
and they are all going down to build
homes there-maybe! This is to show
you what fine neighhors you are going
to have. But as soon as they unload on
the poor and unsuspecting you can buy
their "homes that is. the land, for
the house has never been built-and off
they go to start another land sWindle,
miles away, where they can buy at three
to five dollars per acre by taking lots of
it, only to prove the old adage of P. t.
Barnum all over again.
Homes for Winter, ""Avoid the Rig
ors of Northern Climate" "Secure
Ranch in the Sunny South" plant satsu
mas, soft shell pecans, melons and sweet
potatoes, and in five years you can live
on your income, and your hardest work
will be to draw your breath. Maybe.
DO not believe it, my readers. It's
hundred to one shot that by two years
your land will be for sale, and you back
on your old job, a wiser but poorer man,
with all this dream of elegant ease and
loafing knocked out of you. You will be
glad to get back to Gods country again,