The year 1865 saw Montgomery an utterly exhausted little town of some six
thousand people, with three broken-down railroads.
The year 1888 finds her a city of 30,000 people, with six well-equipped
railroads. Her sole resource was trade with the cotton planters of the
surrounding country, and such enterprise as men might exhibit who started
life over without a dollar. This difference between 1865 and 1888 is
stated to show the discerning reader that there is a source of wealth
here, and that the people have utilized it as fast as they could
accumulate capital to develop it.
[Illustration: Residence of W. B. Davidson]
Unaided by the influx of capital and enterprise from the East and from
Europe, that has so rapidly built other sections of the country, she
accomplished so much. What could be done with that aid need not be written
to be appreciated. Both enterprise and capital are turning to the South
now, and both have found Alabama their best field of operation. It is the
purpose of this little pamphlet to show that Montgomery is the place of
places for the enterprise that seeks a field for development, for the
capital that seeks investment, and for the citizen of a more northern
latitude who desires a change of residence to a prosperous city in a
more genial clime.
[Illustration: Government Building]
[Illustration: Court House]
Montgomery is the capital of Alabama, a State whose area is more than
fifty thousand square miles, and whose population is nearly or quite one
million and a half. She is near the geographical center of the State,
exactly in the center of the three great sources of wealth that are giving
such an impetus to Alabama's development, and has such close connection
with every part of the State that, leaving her depot in the morning, every
station on Alabama's nearly 3,000 miles of railroad may be reached before
night. When it is added that the Alabama river, navigable all the year
round, connects her with the Gulf of Mexico, it will be seen that her
facilities as a trade and business center leave little to be desired.
[Illustration: Jos. Goetter's Residence]
[Illustration: I. Pollak's Residence]
No city is more completely equipped with all the conveniences that make
the modern city than Montgomery. Her water works supply her with 5,000,000
gallons of pure artesian water daily. Her streets are lighted by the Brush
electric light, and her dwellings and business houses by the incandescent
electric light and gas. She has a complete system of street railway, and
is just completing a thorough system of sanitary sewerage. That such a
city should have good hotels, churches, free public schools, theatres,
telephones, etc., etc., goes without the saying.
[Illustration: City Hall]
[Illustration: County Jail]
That Montgomery does an annual business of over $30,000,000; that her
manufactures are rapidly becoming an important element of her wealth; that
she has recently expended millions in improvements, and that she offers
the lowest death rate of any city on this continent, is all hereafter set
out in detail. She here invites attention to the claim that she offers the
best location for purposes of business, commercial or manufacturing, that
the developing South affords.
Alabama has three sources of wealth--agricultural, mineral and timber. The
Mineral belt lies across the Northern third of the State, and there more
than a hundred million of dollars have been expended within the last five
years in opening coal and iron deposits that surpass those of
Pennsylvania.
The Timber belt lies across the Southern third of the State, and there
billions of feet of yellow pine stand untouched in the virgin forest,
while a hundred saw mills are humming along the railroads and rivers.
The Agricultural belt lies across the center of the State from East to
West. A belt of prairie, fertile as that of Illinois, is separated from
the Timber belt on the south and the Mineral belt on the north, by wide
stretches of fertile uplands. Along the streams and in the uncleared
forests of this central belt are vast quantities of hard woods, suited to
every purpose of manufacture.
[Illustration: J. W. Dimmick's Residence]
In the heart of this Agricultural belt, sits Montgomery, with her river
and six railroads. She is the commercial emporium of this farming region,
while a few miles north or south brings her to the cheap fuel and the
cheap lumber of the Mineral and Timber regions of a State more richly
endowed in these respects than any State in the American Union.
These rich farming lands, already recovered from the revolution in the
labor system, are still to be had for from $3 to $15 per acre, while vast
bodies of timber lands are still in the hands of the government, at $1.25
per acre.
[Illustration: Residence of O. O. Nelson]
Montgomery only asks that the man of enterprise and the man of capital
shall come and see for himself. Cheap iron, cheap fuel, cheap cotton,
cheap lumber and a consuming population of 500,000 farmers hold out
inducements to the manufacturer, unsurpassed on the American continent.