Year: 1874

| OUR TEXAS LETTER.


Emigration Pouring in--Texas in 1890
| Political Notes, etc., etc.


Houston. Texas, J
September llth 1874.


Mr.. EDITOR.


That the influx of people here this


winter will be tremendous, there can


be no doubt. In all probability not
less than a quarter of q million will,
within the next eight months, be adj
ded to the population of Texas. They
are coming from South Carolina to
escape the ruin which broods over
that State they are coming from
Georgia and Alabama to find virgin
lands and new fields for enterprise !;
they are coming from Mississippi, be-
cause in all the fertile regions of that
State, the land is already overworked,
and outside Of those regions is too
barren to be cultivated they are
coming from Louisiana that they may
leave State burdened with debt Of
more than fifteen per cent of her tax


able values and which she can never
pay, and will make their homes in
one whose taxes need not be one
sixth Of those they are escaping. Ken
lucky, Tennessee and Virginia will
send their quota, as they always have
in all western movements. Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio and Michigan we're set
tied thirty or forty years ago, by the
restless population of the East which
sought successfully to better its con-
dition there. The new generation
has outgrown the contentment of the
first settlers. The terrible FIVE
months of winter, in which there is
neither snow enough for sleighing,
nor five days Of dry weather enough
to admit of the use Of wheeled We
hicles; in which the temperature
changes some times forty degrees iii
two hours; in which every fifth man
you meet has growing catarrh and
every other man a cold in the head /;
iii which all farm operations are sus-
pended, because impossible-this
winter they do not like and are going
to leave it. They will also escape
the intense heats of summer, where
the thermometer goes up to los in
the shade. The flow Of population
from these States will be even larger
than from the Southern States, be.
cause with their desire to better their
condition they couple enterprise and
push and vim, which are too much
wanting in our more easy going peo-
pie Of the South. They are coming
to show Texans how to produce wheat
OH every acre of their territory. They
are coming to make Texas the garden
and truck farm Of America. New
York and New England are following
the contagious example, and they are
the people who know what the Selado
and the San Marcos, and the Comal
and San Antonio rivers were made
for; who will utilize rivers, which
flow in an unvarying volume, and
with thousand horse power current
from beneath the hills, and which de-
scend by daming gradients for two
hundred miles to the sea and who
know the value of a sheep country,
where the finest woods can be grown
at cost of seven cents a pound.
These people have been compelled to
utilize their dimes, their half dimes
and their copper cents, and to attach
a value to them, and they will teach
Texans that there are five times more
fortunes wasted here by small heed
lessness and minor extravagances,
than are made, many as have been
made. And overwhelming the emigra-
ton from the Eastern States OF
America, will come the people Of
Germany and Great Britain, to whom
Texas is indeed a land Of promise and
reward. How many people are in
Texas now? In 1870 the census gave
nearly million, but the census was
taken with great Indifference. No
man, for the pay allowed, could af-
ford to do the work. No man did
the work of a single county. 1t was
largely made up Of guesscs or necess-
or;lv If nnthinr Tavas ha1 fhon