White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1932-12-22

all multiplied. Paths and mere tracks
on the ground turned to roads. Pala-
tial steamers, with romantic names,
and string bands, deck-hand quar-
tettes, and steam calliopes to entertain
the passengers, came to ply the rivers.
Cotton was king; sometimes it was 30
cents pound-and more. Real estate
companies abounded and the South
saw it's first land boom. Slumps fol-
lowed booms; but men talked always
Of slaves and cotton-and more cotton.
Fortunes grew. From New York to
New Orleans-before 1940-the PONY
Express" was running. With 200 boy
riders and 500 horses, relayed every
II miles, the fast MALI averaged II
miles an hour!
Mounted on blooded saddle horses,
attended by slave grooms and body
servants, kid-gloved sons Of the blue
stockings sought culture at Tuscaloosa,
where the new university was set.
A ''railroad"-one of the first built
in America-was the boast of Tus-
cumbia. Its tiny coaches ran on wood
en- rails, drawn by horses until it's toy
locomotive came in 1884. But much
cotton still went by keel-boat over the
winding Tennessee river up to the
Ohio, and down to the Mississippi, to
New Orleans
After 1850, shops and mills in
creased. More men began to spin,
weave, saw lumber, smelt iron ore,
make shoes, plows, and furniture
everything from ak handles to steam
boats. But only in a small way. Ala
bama was still big buyer of north
ern-made things and essentially agra
rian. These were cold plantation days"
that golden age of Alabama whose
mere mention still arouses emotions
in the born Southerner.
Then the guns of Sumter; the Con-
federacy. Years of. war and ruin for
Alabama, in which she learned one
good lesson: that she could support
herself, live within her own boundaries
Then that quiet Palm Sunday at APP
pomattox, when the great opponents,
Grant and Lee, without parade, band
music, swords, or cannon salutes
quietly made terms Of surrender.
For more than a century cotton was
the symbol of life. The poor renter
with one mule and one pillow, like the
rich planter with domain intact from
slave times. depended on this one crop.
Then Varied Industry.
But world conditions change. Some
old customers overseas no longer must
buy most of their cotton from us.
More and more it is raised elsewhere
AS in Africa, Asia. So now it grows
harder for Alabama to sell cotton
abroad at fair price But it has
thought, talked, planted, picked,
ginned, pressed, and sold cotton so
long, and so fixed is this cotton-only
habit that the state imports much
butter, milk, potatoes, even hay.
Happily, escape Is in sight. What
with science, research, farm schools
and good example Of the more alert
farmers who prove Alabama can grow
much besides cotton-you see dawn
ing in the state new diversified
agriculture.
But that is not all. From the North
men have come with money and ma
chimes, starting mills, shops, shelters
many industries new to Alabama.
Its factories, scattered over the
state, with workers to be fed, open
widening market for Alabama fruit,
vegetable. poultry and dairy farms.
Swiftly, as the lives of states are
measured, you see this clamorous, alien
culture of smoke and steel being i'm
posed on proud, leisurely society,
accustomed for generations to it's vast
cottonfelds, plantation homes, and
calm, well-ordered rural existence.
With her water power, coal, ores,
lumber, raw cotton. surplus labor, and
fine climate, Alabama is forced to bid
her hand. And industrialsm is trumps.
Cotton she will grow, indefinitely. But
more of other things, too-reachlng
finally happier economic balance De-
tween town and country life.
Colleges dot the state; free county
busses haul children many miles to con-
solidated schools and far more teach
ers are graduated each year than the
state can use. You need no rubber
vardstick to measure education's
march.
Next to schools, electric power is
the nrime factor in Alabama's growth.
r. has worked miracles here. Men
damned the streams and blazed wide
avenues through the woods for rows
Of steel towers that carry wires to all
parts of the state. Wherever raw ma
terials exist there power Is sent.
Copper wire. hosiery. silk, condensed
milk steel freight cars, braid and rib
bons, electro-chemical products, all
these and more, are now manufactured