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HARDWOOD RECORD 



July 10, 1!)1T 



tlie ruins; but the mill on the bank of the river had escaped. In 

 order to show the homestead as it appeared when Young Jack- 

 son lived there, the picture from the Sun Lumber Company 's 

 calendar is i-eproduced. The photo was made several years ago. 

 The mill is the only building now standing. It was built about one 

 hundred year.s ago bj' Cummins Jackson, Stonewall's uncle, who 

 owned the mill and the plantation with many slaves. The future 

 general spent his youth there, working in the mill and about the 

 plantation, and began ofificial life when seventeen years old by 

 serving as constable in that peaceable and prosperous community. 



From this place he set out (tradition says on foot) for West 

 Point to pass his examinations as a cadet. The tradition that he 

 -went on foot has the merest fragment of truth in it. His uncle 

 Tvas a rich man, with plenty of horses, and the nephew set forth 

 -well mounted, but at the end of twenty miles (at Clarksburg) in- 

 tercepted the stage coach for the east, and sent his horse back. He 

 ■did, however, run on foot two or three miles to overtake the stage 

 -which had passed shortly before his arrival. 



When the mill was visited by the Record man not long ago it 

 was found in excellent preservation. The wheels were still going 

 round jis they had been going for a century; but a motor now fur- 

 nishes the driving power, instead of a water wheel as formerly. 

 The mill was built of yellow poplar, and the beams, posts, and 

 siding, though somewhat weathered by the vicissitudes of a hun- 

 dred 3-ears, are as sound as a dollar today. Clearer, finer lumber 

 no man ever saw. This was originally a region of magnificent 

 poplar timber, as is proved by the size and form of an occasional 

 tree that has escaped the axes of the land elearers and log cutters. 

 It is now a highly developed agricultural region, possessing great 

 prosperity and wealth, -with "cattle on a thousand hills." 



The old mill is looked upon by the neighboring people as a sort 

 of shrine to the memory of the great general who spent his boy- 

 hood there. Some of the older people remember him and recount 

 many traditions concerning his early life. 



Accounts of the final hour of General Jackson say that aftef 

 receiving the mortal wound from the guns of his own pickets who 

 mistook him for an enem}', his last words were: "Let us cross 

 over the river and rest iu the shade of the trees." Many have 

 wondered if the picture rising in his memory, in the hour of de- 

 lirium, did not relate to the scene of his boyhood, with its trees, 

 shade, and river. It may have been. Splendid sycamores, whose 

 shade he must have known while a boy, still left their white trunks 

 and wide-spreading arms above the grassy banks of the Monou- 

 gahela river. 



The Land Meeting 



ABOUT TEN DAYS AGO there was held at Memphis, Tenn., the 

 most important meeting that lumbermen were ever responsible 

 for. Many who came with the frank expectation of being more or 

 less bored by a subject of which they knew little, went away with 

 a big inspiration, with remade ideas on the subject in behalf of 

 which the meeting was called, with a now conception of the duty 

 of southern operators to the nation and, it might almost be said, 

 to the world. The meeting of the Southern Alluvial Land Asso- 

 ciation held at Memphis ou Saturday, June 30, was without doubt 

 or exception of more stirring concern to those who attended, to the 

 trade at large, and to the country than any other gathering in which 

 lumbermen have participated otBcially. 



And why is this so? Merely because it was definitely shown that 

 the tremendous, potential food possibilities of the cut-over land in 

 the Mississippi delta, the alluvial farm lands which have been pro- 

 claimed as even richer than the famous lands in the valley of the 

 Nile, are being used to but a very small fraction of their capacity 

 in food stuffs, both grain and animal. The meeting was of impor- 

 tance in that it showed this condition and brought a thorough real- 

 ization of the duty of those whose tasks it will be to bring the pro- 

 iluctivity of the delta country to as near its maximum as possible. 

 The lumbermen responsible for the organization of the Southern 

 Alluvial Land Association started a movement the scope and vast- 



ness and importance of which they had no definite conception when 

 the organization of this body was first promulgated. 



The association offers the only means, and a very logical one, for 

 approaching the problem intelligently and with certainty of suc- 

 cessful solution, but the work so far accomplished has been merely 

 elementary. It has not even begun to get down to the real neces- 

 sities or to work out the problem in its many phases in the prac- 

 tical manner that will be necessary. The first thing necessary 

 toward this end is the enlisting of moral and financial support, the 

 bringing into the ranks as workers, and the definite and active 

 aligning with the movement as a whole, of those people in the delta 

 country who are beginning to apply more modern agricultural ideas, 

 and who are working with a conception of the possibility of that 

 territory and a belief that they have a duty to perform in utilizing 

 tiiese tremendous natural resources to the nth power. 



Fortunately the members of the association gave evidence of 

 realizing that the alluvial land association cannot reach its maxi- 

 mum usefulness if operated as a side issue of lumbering. It must 

 be made a primary issue and to this end the interest of everybody 

 actively and practically engaged in farming and stock raising in 

 that region must be enlisted. 



The problems are necessarilj' those of the farm rather than of the 

 sawmill, and it cannot be expected that the sawmill man will have 

 the practical and scientific knowledge of the questions of farming 

 nor the time apart from the important business of making lumber 

 properly, to put tlie energy and push Ijehind the latid association 

 which that organization needs. So with the enlistment of assistance 

 by men iu the business, and that movement is already well under 

 way, it can be confidently expected that the complete development 

 of the alluvial territory in the southland will be realized in the 

 near future. Those tremendous resources will be turned to the 

 benefit of the country many years before they would be made usable 

 were the ordinary course of events left to work themselves out. 



Inadequate Transportation 



THE COUNTRY IS SUFFERING FROM A SHORTAGE IN 

 TRANSPORTATION facilities more than ever iu the past, 

 although the facilities are better now than ever before, and the 

 bulk of material carried was never before as great as it is now. The 

 railroad are by all odds the most important means of transj)ortation 

 and they are overloaded. There has been no breakdown in the sys- 

 tem, no failure of the different parts to work in harmony, no decline 

 in the quantity or (juality of equipment, and no deterioration in the 

 efliciency of the management. The trouble of which shippers com- 

 plain is due primarily and principally to the fact that the quantity 

 of articles to be shipped has grown beyond all precedent, and the 

 railroads are overburdened. They cannot carry what is offered. 

 Their equipments have not expanded as rapidly as the demand for 

 transportation. When the question is simmered down to bare 

 facts, that is what is the matter. 



Daniel Willard, speaking for the railroads, recently summarized 

 the situation for the Council of National Defense in this terse 

 statement: 



The railroads of the United States, operated as one system, are 

 c;irrying more freight than ever before in the history of the coun- 

 try, but when they have carried traffic up to 100 per cent of their 

 capacity there still remains 15, 25, perhaps 30, per cent of traffic 

 which it is impossible for them to carry at all. 



The cause underlying the embargoes, the congestion, and the 

 lack of cars where needed, is now pretty generally known, and the 

 search for a remedy is active. Many suggestions have been put 

 forward. The railroads suggested a fifteen per cent increase in 

 freight rates; but that has been ruled out, for the present at least, 

 on the ground that it would simply be paying the railroads more 

 money for the same amount of hauling, and would not move any 

 more freight. Another suggestion, and apparently an unwise one, 

 is that the government take charge of the railroads and run them. 

 Since the roads are already operating to 100 per cent of capacity. 



