The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-02-08
Motor Vehicles Increase Values
 Waste Lands

| The development of motor trans i than anything else to bring about a change in the entire complexion of | the Southern States. This complete | transformation has been observed not | | only by casual travellers through that | section of the country, but paruc- ular1y by those persons who have been in the habit of making journeys | South during the last half dozen years.
 The changes that have taken place, 1 due largely to better means of rural transportation, hahe been of vast i'm portance not only in an economic of land, which in former years could be bought for a song, has mater1aMy increased. Sosoal intercourse has been promoted, and no longer is the wife of the farmer isolated in her little frame dwelling in the back woods, but she is brought directly the the' city. becaHsea with her motor car she can readily reach the nearest railroad station, whence usually 1t IS
 but a shore side to the city. where she can save money on her purchases and also take in the sights.
 The enhancement of land values in . the middle sections of Georgia. Ala
 bama and Mississippi by reason of motor transportation, has been par ticularly marked. Splendid farms, at , a distance of twenty miles from the , nearest railroad, formerly could be bought for as little s to s6 an tacre But that situation has now : been changed
 Land Now Remunerative.
 The change has been worked in an Interesting manner. That those iso I lated farmlands formerly found no l purchasers was entirely due to their , linaccessibiEty. Plantation owners, , who for many years have been In une i, habit of advancing bkoth mony and , rations to thir tnantS, found this kind , of business unproitable, because they . were unable to determine the pro- they made the advances and further. , at harvest time thy were unable to l determine whether interruptions ten ants were running off large propor- ttions of their cotton. corn and cattle
 on which the merchant-planters held liens.
 Now this situation has been obvi-
 ated. The landlord jumps into hls
 riding over his plantation in the ca
 pacity of an overseer. Many of the | old-time landlords are eNerclsinb too ' great a vigilance and that they are unable to realize the profits on thelr
 harvests as in former years.
 But many of the negro tenants have moved out of the rural sections, leav- $ ing their farms idle. This condition T was greatly accentuated by tho de- mand for industrial laborers during u the war. Indeed, in some sections .s of the black belt the farms have been :. U so utterly deserted that the country side has been plagued with an excess
 of rabbits, formerly the principal
 sport of the negroes. These animals
 work great destruction to sweet pota-
 toes and other crops, and the farmers
 have been forced to abandon the po- . tato crop in many instances, just as II they were forced to give up the cultf- ! vation of cotton because of the bol 7 weevil
 l. Idle Farms Big Problem. d What should be done with these y. idle farms was a perplexing problem le for the Southern landowners, unti ts they awoke to the practicability O. Id motor transportation. They are con tt verting these tracts of land into i'm '- mense pecan orchards. and with th' y aid of the motor car they are able
 l to plant and cultivate these nut
 bearing trees. For while labor is un
 obtainable on the farms, they find i . possible to gather the forces O rs workmen that are required to dis SC the holes and plant the budded trees
 and then once or twice a year mak'
 a journey back to the orchards tt
 break up the soil with disk blows
 prune the young trees and replace al
 those that have died.
 The land owners in the middle bel
 of the southern tier of the Southerr
 states admit that the motor car hat
 i been responsible for the enormou
 advance in the values of their land
 What formerly sold for S3 and s5 al
 acre is now fetching s25 an acre il
 the remote districts. and small farm
 adjacent to the villages, situated ol
 the railroads. are sefirng for as mucl
 as $100 an acre. This is because O
 the enormous producticity of pecal
 groves. The landowners estimat
 that an acre planted in oceans vii
 produce yearly S250, even shoul
 these nuts, which have been selling 1T
 the last few years for s1 a, pound, de
 | cline in price to as little as 10 cents
 which is highly improbable, becaus the homelv peanut has rarely eve fallen to that mark.
 Cattle Men Benefited. The motor car similarly has prove a godsend to the cattle men. In year gone by they depended almost solel on the saddle horse to convey then through miles of fields and hills il search of their stock, and it was whole days job to round up catts for salting and feeding. A typica instance of the benefit to the cattl raisers from the motor car was ob served recently on a ranch near Liv ingston, Ala. The owner of an es tate of about 1000 acres. who for
 merly realized returns from the lant
 that were hardly sufficient to pa l taxes, decided to stock it with cattle A few years ago that land was but . series of limestone hills, as white an' as bleak as the deserts of Arizona . The hills were washing away unt the owner conceived the idea of fill ing the gullyeS with underbrush | ing the gulleys with underbrush t i, the land with alfalfa This treatmer
 resulted, at the end of couple years in yielding one of the riches pastures ever seen in that part of tn { country.
 , The owner then stocked the Ian , with 500 head of cattle. These l, bought as yearlings at s35 a hea in