White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1933-02-23

| mas Story QlIIeTouC lIOu IudI
of most of it's sister states. Its story
Is more than a recital of statistics;
1t is more than review of the number
of organs and scales manufactured
there annually and far more interest
Ing than an estimate of the number
of miles of public buildings which
could be faced each year with it's mar
BILE and granite, and rooted with its
slate. 1t has elements of drama.
1t has faced not seven, but seventy,
lean years.
In the seventy years from 1850 to
1920 the census returns show that the
population increased only from 314, 12O
to 1852, 429 or 38,309-a little more than
IL per cent. During this same period
the increase for the United States as
whole was more than $50 per cent.
In the ten years from 1910 to 1920 the
number of Vermonters actually de-
creased. Yet the future seems bright
enough to the men and women of the
Green mountains.
The outsider may, perhaps, be for
given If he hopes that it's prosperity
shall be no more than modest, and that
1t shall not interfere greatly with Yer
mont's present status. For it is today
one of the most truly American of our
states. It's people have hardly changed
In their essential elements in cen
fury. Barely one in nine is foreign
born, and the majority of these are
Canadian and therefore American.
Vermont's drama is rooted in that
fact. Its people are dynamic lot
hard-hitting, resourceful, energetic,
restless. In the census Of 1890 it was
shown that Of the total population of
B5,425, approximately $1,000 were of
English stock and 1900 Scotch.
Its Young Men Left.
The oncoming years brought few
today in Vermont were on the earliest
records. There was little, to be can
did about it, in Vermont to tempt i'm
migration in the last fifty years Of the
past century. There was everything
outside to tempt emigration. The
young men left, just as young Scots
men go to London.
Iowa's rich prairies called the farm
err who had stumbled over Vermont's
rocky hills. Once famed for merino
sheep-it became the inheritor of the
Spanish Grown when the royal flecks
we're dissipated under the threat Of
Napoleon's invasion-it saw them dis
appear under the pressure of necessity
Sheep held on costly land and fed
seven months in the year cannot COM
pete with those grazed on free land
the year round.
lands were held. of course, but in the
pioneer days farmers built cabins on
hill shoulders for the sake Of the
early morning reinsurance Of neigh
boris plume of smoke across the val
ley. Many of these hill farms became
economically impossible.
Today the dairy COW is taking the
place sheep once held in Vermont's
scheme of things. The COW must be
fed all winter long but she abundantly
repays. Milk trains squeak through the
winter SHOWS to gather cans at every
crossroad. Milk trains roar through
the early dawn, bound for the great
eastern cities.
This achievement has only lately
been made possible by the creation Of
new transportation facilities. Her
enormous marble industry-One shrinks
| tSxyA e,fo hit WV
mont is very certain there can be no
greater marble quarries in the world
had not been thought of.
The dignified statehouse at Mont
pelier, the capital, was built of gram
lite from the famous quarries which
have made Vermont the leader among
the states In the value Of this stone
SUPPLIED for monumental and struc-
tural purposes
Rich In Marble and Granite.
So, If one sees nothing else in Yer.
mont today. he should see the marble
quarries and the granite works. where
armies of skilled men, equipped with
the latest engineering appliances, wrest
huge blocks of stone from the states
rich mountain sides.
Many families were literally starved
out Of the village of Lowell In north.
ern Vermont in the early days. Wagon
trains left for Kentucky and the West
. ern Reserve. No one then knew OF
the vast beds of asbestos in that part
of the state.
So with tale and slate and the other
mineral riches which are now being
slowly developed. Nor did anyone sus
pect that her rounded hills and lovely
dales would some time offer prom