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.
THE SOUTHERN STATES.
THE
Southern States.