The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1938-07-29
still plies his trade in Mississippi.
How Machinery Is Transforming
This Once Agricultural State

Prepared by National Geographic Society.
Washington, D. C.-WNU Service.
A EACHINES are coming
MI to agricultural Missis-
1 L sippi.
After a morning tour of in
dustrial jackson you scrape
from your shoe soles layers OF
cottonseed oil, pungent creo-
sote, and clayey bentonite, all
caked hard with dried mud
from a petroleum well being
dug by special appropriation
of the state legislature.
Twice daily the red and silver
streamline Rebel train flashes
through the state-past OK teams
plodding along sunken roads, new
myriad-windowed garment fac
tories, Negroes driving ramshackle
buckboards glides beneath air
planes that are heading into the
capitals spacious, four-way airport.
Over in Natchez girls in lavender
hoop-skirt gowns trimmed with rare
old lace side into automobiles to
drive annual pilgrimage-week visi-
tors to ante-bellum homes straight
from the pages of $50 Red the
Rose"
Up the Delta a sprightly gentle
man of eighty-two years calls his
chauffeur to take you in his car to
a log cabin still standing on the
plantation of 5000 acres Of cotton,
corn, pecans, and hay. He and his
uncle built the cabin only IS years
ago, after they had cleared the
land and f1oated the timbers in from
the surrounding forest and the CHM
ney brick from the river dock 10
miles distant.
This epic from covered wagon to
limousine in one mans lifetime is
a clue to why Mississippians call
their state "the last frontier"
Jackson Is Spacious and Busy.
Busy, modern jackson illustrates
the Transformation. This city is no
upstart; it has been the state capital
since 1922. Stately homes with wis
terra growing over colunned por-
ticoes and with Grape myrtle on
the lawns line wide avenues.
Barber shops still are spacious
forums of political argument where
a southern colonel may doff his
broad-brimmed hat in courtly salu-
tation without topping over coat
rack. Rooms in hotels, Office build
ings, and homes knew not the
builder who estimates costs in cubic
feet.
From sidewalks beneath rusty tin
roofs you look across the street
toward shop fronts with onyxlike
tiles, FURNISHED metal, and neon
lights.
One tall office building with Gu
bistic floors and chromium elevator
doors rises knife-edged to carve an
otherwise gracious skyline just OPP
posite a colonial-type home now
painted green and occupied by the
Salvation Army.
AS recently as 1920 century-old
jackson still had only 22,817 people;
by 1880 it counted more than twice
that number; in 1887 local census
estimated nearly $4,000, a rate of
growth rivaling that of Los Angeles.
The citizens disclaim any boom.
The increase, they assert with rea-
son, is the normal result of several
obvious causes.
One impetus was the discovery
only seven years ago of natural
gas which now flows from nearly
100 wells in the city limits, much
of it into pipe lines that radiate
all over the state and reach even
into Louisiana and Florida.
Another change was putting
through high-power transmission
lines-the state had none until 1925
and the consequent encourage
ment of factories in jackson as well
as in many other places.
Roads and Cottonseed Gil.
Most important factor, perhaps,
is the bodybuilding program which
gives centrally-situated jackson an
ever-wider Widespread as shop
ping point, and controverts the old
taunt that Mississippi has three
big cities: Mobile, New Orleans,
and Memphis -
Early among Jackson's indus
tries, naturally enough, were cotton
seed oil mills.
In the musty archives of the squat
old state capitol are ante-bellum
laws which prohibited gin owners
from polluting streams with cotton