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.
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.
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.
