The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1917-03-05

crease. From year to year it will be
gin earlier. and instead of the crowd
not reaching Florida until the middle
of January. il will in a few years be
pushing into the State by November
or early December. and thousands
who have heretofore returned from
Florida to the North and West with
the first sign of a spring day in their
own home regions will stretch out
their Florida stay and not leave here
until April or May. The number of
tourists will steadily increase. and the
length of their stay will increase.
The situation demands a recognition
on the part of the railroads, and it
should stimulate hotel people and
capitalists to build many hotels at
many points throughout the State
both on the East and the West Coast,
as well as in the interior.
Florida is at last coming into it's
own, and its own is to be a condition
where it will be nationally recognized
as the great playground and winter
home of hundreds of thousands, not
simply of the idle rich. but of the
great plain people, the men of mod
crate means. and the men of small
means. Indeed, the State has long
, since ceased to be counted as the win
ter resort of the idle rich, for the
number of people of moderate means
who come here for the winter prob
ably far exceeds the number of the
| rich. People are finding that they
can escape the rigors of Northern eli
mates; that they can live here as
moderately or as extensively as they
choose; that they can find in nearly
every part of Florida a duplicate on
a small scale of Atlantic City, with
its numberess hotels and boarding
houses and cottages for rent.
One feature of florida life which
has never received adequate recogni-
ton is the ability to find comfortably
furnished homes for rent, homes
ranging from the inexpensive but
well-built bungalow to far more elab.
crate place. Housekeeping, so far
as marketing is concerned, in variety
and extent, matches housekeeping Cd
portunities in any Of the great cities
of the country. 1t is becoming the
common thing, and should be more
widely adopted, for people to rent
furnished homes for the winter. or
else to build and own the bungalow
or the larger cottage and spend their
winters in the comforts of home life.
without the disadvantages OF the av-
erage clearinghouse or even OF the
larger and more expensive hotel
With an increase of population in
the United States now amounting to
about 2OOOO.0OO every 10 years; with
a growth in wealth at the rate of
about $1,000,00O.O00 a month. the
number Of people who will be able to
get away from the death-dealing bliz-
yards Of the North and West to the
balmy summer climate of Florida Is
increasing at a rate which has not
yet been adequately appreciated by
the railroads nor by hotel owners or
ap nj nI inf1 int
ties
Severals years ago. when the writer
first undertook to motor through a
portion of Florida, roads were almost
impossible propositions. You simply
travelled through waste OF sand,
misnamed roads. On the first motor
ride between Jacksonville and Day
tona, 10 miles. against which we had
been warned. two other automobiles
were met, and they created astonish-
ment that any other motorist should
have been so foolhardy as to risk the
trip which our party was making.
But in studying the question OF what
good roads would mean to the South.
many trips were made from year to
year through roads that were de-
clared by local people to be impass-
able and impossible propositions.
with the determination to find the
worst and see how great would be the
improvements following the construc-
ton OF good roads That seems but
a few years ago. Today. Florida is
literally alive with automobiles. Be.
fore Christmas more than 5000 au-
tomobiles from the North and West
had passed through Jacksonville alone
on the way to points farther south.
Today, the automobile is in evidence
everywhere. Indeed. there are many