ALABAMA 



the city, including hanks, churches, schools, 

 hotels, etc., is the postoffice, erected in 1890 

 at a cost of nearly $100,000; the county court- 

 house, costing about $450,000, and the new 

 $150,000 auditorium-armory. Akron is the seat 

 of Buchtel College, a non-sectarian school for- 

 merly under Universalist control. The corner 

 stone was laid by Horace Greeley in 1872. This 

 college and. a normal school, with the public 

 school system, offer good educational advan- 

 tage* 



Industries. The output of rubber goods 

 manufactured in Akron in 1915 was valued at 

 $125,000,000. Twenty plants making automo- 

 bile tires and every kind of rubber goods em- 

 ploy 30,000 workers. Beds of fire and pottery 

 clay near the city furnish raw material for one 

 of the largest industries, including manufac- 



1 J 1 ALABAMA 



tories of pottery, tile and terra-cotta. Among 

 a great number of other important manufac- 

 turing industries are printing, publishing and 

 lithographing works, hoisting and mining-ma- 

 chinery works, manufactories of farm imple- 

 ments and of furnaces. In the suburb Barber- 

 ton is the largest match-making concern in 

 the world. 



History. A small settlement on the banks 

 of tlu Cuyahoga River received the name of 

 Akron in 1825. The place was incorporated 

 as a village in 1836 and received a city charter 

 in 1865. Two of the most important historical 

 features are the old Indian trail, Portage Path, 

 once a part of the western boundary of the 

 United States, between the Cuyahoga and Tus- 

 carawas rivers, and the one-time residence of 

 John Brown, the abolitionist. v.s.s. 



.LAB AM 'A, popularly called the 

 COTTON STATE, one of the Southern states of 

 the American Union. Alabama is said by some 

 authorities to be the Creek Indian word for 

 here we rest, or place of rest, but it is probably 

 another form of Alibamu, the name of a tribe 

 of Creek Indians who once inhabited part of 

 the present state. Alabama was admitted to 

 the Union on December 14, 1819, being the 

 ninth state organized after the adoption of the 

 Constitution. At that time its area, 51,998 

 square miles, was exceeded only by three states, 

 but since the admission of the larger Western 

 states it ranks twenty-seventh in size. It has 

 about one-fourth the area of France or the 

 German Empire, and is equal to Maine, New 

 Hampshire and Vermont combined. Its popu- 

 lation in 1910 was 2,138,093, making it the 

 eighteenth state in this respect. In the same 

 year the city of Chicago had about the same 

 number of people. 



Location and Physical Characteristics. Ala- 

 bama is really the central one of the Southern 

 states east of the Mississippi River. Between 

 it and the Atlantic Ocean lies Georgia; on the 

 west Mississippi stretches between it and the 

 great central river. On the north is the border 

 state of Tennessee, separated from Alabama by 

 the parallel of 35 N., which is also the ap- 



proximate latitude of Los Angeles, Yokohama 

 and Algiers. On the south, except for a strip 

 fifty miles long which touches the Gulf of 

 Mexico, Alabama is bounded by Florida. 



Alabama has the physical characteristics of 

 the Atlantic coast states. Like them, it may 

 be divided into three sections, according to 

 surface the coastal plain, the Piedmont region 

 and the mountains. The Appalachian chain has 

 its southern extremity in the north and east- 

 central part of the state, where it dwindles into 

 several parallel ranges of flat-topped hills which 

 nowhere exceed 1,800 feet in height. The most 

 prominent are Raccoon and Lookout mountains, 

 which follow the southwest trend of the Appa- 

 lachian chain. It was on the northern end of 

 Lookout Mountain, in Tennessee, that one of 

 the great battles of the War of Secession was 

 fought. Southeast of the mountains is the 

 main Appalachian valley, here known as the 

 Coosa. The section is drained by the Coosa 

 River, whose waters eventually find their way 

 through the Alabama and Mobile rivers into 

 the Gulf of Mexico. 



North and west of the Appalachian region is 

 the Cumberland Plateau, whose central feature 

 is the valley of the Tennessee River. The val- 

 ley itself includes a broad strip of rolling low- 

 lands, well adapted for farming, but on both 



