_By Clark Bell._
I am asked to contribute a paper to the SOUTHERN STATES, giving my
impressions of my first trip South. I will reply as I have done to
my friend Mr. Clark Howell, of Atlanta, Ga., for the columns of his
paper, from the stand-point of a business man and farmer, and not in
my relation to the party who recently visited the seaboard States,
composed in the main of medical editors, their wives and friends.
Too much praise cannot be awarded Dr. W. C. Wile, of Danbury, Conn.,
for promoting and organizing the party of Northern medical editors and
their friends, thus bringing to their attention the unusual advantages
of the Piedmont section of the Southern seaboard States to Northern
emigration.
These distinguished gentlemen will shortly communicate their views
through their respective journals, but what I shall say now will be
quite free from all professional considerations.
Either North Carolina or Georgia must be regarded as the paradise
of the fruit grower. I have had a large experience in vine growing
and wine making in Western New York, having planted one of the first
vineyards on the shores of Lake Keuka, and being one of the promoters
of the Urbana Wine Co., and I am familiar in a practical way with that
most remunerative culture of the black raspberry, in Yates county, New
York, which furnishes the evaporated dried fruit so much now in demand,
and may fairly be classed as one qualified to speak, in a practical
way, as to the general features of fruit growing. The wine-growing
industry, yet in its infancy in North Carolina, has gone far enough
to demonstrate an assured success in a lucrative way, to those who
carry on its productions on business methods. The experiments made at
Southern Pines, N. C., have gone far enough to leave no manner of doubt
of splendid results in the near future.
The difficulty with which the Northern grower has to contend are the
high price of land and labor and the early frost. Labor in both Georgia
and North Carolina is abundant and cheap. Eight dollars per month will
cover the wages of men with rations, which can be computed at $2.50
per month. Frost is quite out of the question. The cost of land in
desirable locations is as low as $3 to $10 per acre, and if unimproved
land is taken a net of $10 would be ample to put good land ready to
plant the vine. The plow can run in both the States every month in the
year.
By way of Norfolk, the markets of New York and Philadelphia are as
accessible to the fruit growers of these States as to Western New York,
in both time and rate. North Carolina seems to have been chary of the
immigration of foreigners. Of that great flood of European blood that
has for the past twenty-five years poured into the ports of New York,
neither North Carolina nor Georgia has received anything worth naming.
It has swept like an enormous wave over the West, but not on the South
Atlantic seaboard. You would secure those who are desirable and by
proper work could do so.
The citizens of Northern States do not correctly understand your
section. They should visit and carefully look into the capacities
of your States. Nothing dispels illusions like contact and personal
examination. The North is full of active, energetic, industrious men
inured to labor, who do not know what advantages you offer or they
would flood into and buy up your unoccupied lands and form a splendid
factor in the New South now forming. Would the Northern settlers be
hospitably received? At the North this would be a controlling question.
General Manager Winder, of the Seaboard Air Line, assures me that in
his State the Northern settler would be most welcome. Ex-Governor
Jarvis, of North Carolina, in a recent conversation, assured me that
the Southern welcome would be whole-souled, full and free from the
slightest danger of interference. I have equally high authority in
Georgia of a similar state of public sentiment. Northern settlers
would, strange as it may sound to you, need to be assured in these
respects.
The present depressed state of financial affairs is not against such an
immigration now. Your splendid railways should give especial facilities
in reduced freights to actual settlers. Austin Corbin, one of our
greatest railroad workers, transports free over his railways every
pound of material an actual settler puts on his land in improvements.
I would advocate free transportation of the household goods of every
actual Northern settler by your great railway lines.
I do not dare to state what I think of the future of North Carolina
and Georgia within the next fifty years. Yes, twenty-five years. No
Georgian or Carolinian would believe as much as I see coming in the
next generation. With a climate that not only rivals, but excels
that of Italy, I say to Georgians and North Carolinians if you will
yourselves open to Northern eyes the enormous advantages of your grand
States, you will witness a spectacle within the next thirty years as
marvelous as that we saw in Atlanta, where a magnificent city has
arisen, phœnix-like, from the ashes made by Sherman’s army. And the new
States of Georgia and North Carolina will come into a new and grander
life, which will be as much a wonder to the next generation as Atlanta
is to this.