32' THE ALABAMA Ol'l'ORTU N IT V. 



\Viregrass with whom I stopped and who of a certainty should 

 know the soils thereabouts. 



It is worthy of note that wherever popular voice assigned 

 the most fertile thereabouts would be found one of the newly 

 risen and prosperous towns. Such belts of territory were given 

 to Hartford, to Dothan, to Enterprise and to Headland, the 

 latter being an old town that is being moved forward by new 

 srength and new vitality. 



At Enterprise they claim the prettiest farming section in 

 Southeast Alabama. Now, this is a patriotic claim made by 

 loyal and interested people and it may be susceptible to a ref- 

 utation. However that may be, it is not to be doubted thai 

 about this new town is' a big garden of farms, so fertile, so 

 well kept that the country never fails to make a deep impres- 

 sion on all who see it. • And the visitor who has passed through 

 it and failed to tell its praises when he passed out of it has 

 gone unrecorded. 



This particular section is either unusually fine or it has an 

 extraordinarily industrious set of farmers. The general satis- 

 faction, the financial strength of the farmers of Enterprise's 

 particular territory is not open for argument. At every turn 

 it is impressed upon the visitor. 



An instance to emphasize this fact was brought up by an 

 attorney who was familiar with the incident. An Enterprise 

 farmer in January lent an Enterprise merchant the sum of 

 $5,000.' This particular merchant needed the sum to carry 

 forward his business. Instead of going to a bank he made his 

 need known to a farmer friend with the result that he got the 

 money immediately. Of course the country is not full of 

 farmers who have $5,000 to lend at a moment's notice, but the 

 section has in it many farmers; who have cash to pay for what 

 they get and who have cotton to sell when the price suits them. 

 Especially is this true. In a half day's drive through the coun- 

 try one can hardly pass a farmhouse in the yard of which 

 there is not a row of cotton bales, sometimes as few as two 

 and sometimes: as numerous as forty. Of course, it is fre- 

 quently the case that money is borrowed on the cotton, that 

 some merchant or some broker is more or less interested in the 

 store of cotton. Nor is the idea to be had that every 

 farmer in the territory about Enterprise is absolutely free 

 from debt. 



