THE ALABAMA OPPORTUNITY. 83 



A new thought on the financial condition of the section was 

 brought out by Vice-President Byrd oi the Enterprise Bank- 

 ing Company, who moved into Enterprise from Ozark last 

 August. 



"This is of course a new country about here," said Mr. 

 Byrd, "and being a new countr}^ the prosperity of the farm- 

 ers is remarkable. You see most of them come in with but 

 very little. Some of them had enough to make a small payment 

 on their place. Others did not have that much. They, there- 

 fore, had to build from the ground up. They had to buy their 

 land, clear it up, establish homes and pay for it all. All this 

 had to be done in the past seven years'. In fact, the average 

 time the farmer of this territory has been here is four years. 

 That they have done so well in so short a time is decidedly to 

 their credit. That a good many of them owe some money is 

 not to their discredit. Our bank is carrying a good deal of 

 cotton in money loaned to farmers. We have a number of cus- 

 tomers on our books who are holding from 20 to 25 bales. 

 Naturally the older settlers who have been in the longest are 

 in the best condition, but the entire section is much better ofif 

 than ever before. An indication of this is in the fact that lands 

 are held right now at the highest figures that were ever known 

 in Coffee County. A few days ago a sale was made of forty 

 acres of land at $25 an acre. Our farms are much smaller 

 than those of other sections. The average farm here is a 

 two mule farm, a farm having perhaps sixty acres in it. It 

 is a hog and hominy country here. The farmers are given to 

 raising syrup, potatoes, corn, meat and other things needed at 

 home." 



Enterprise has grown large enough to support two prosper- 

 ous banks, the Enterprise Banking Company and the First 

 National Bank. 



In speaking of the physical aspect of the country about En- 

 terprise, A. S. Edwards', one of the older farmers, said: "I tell 

 you. it is the finest farming section of the State. And the 

 country is so thickly settled that you could hardly appreciate 

 it without seeing it. The immediate territory about Enterprise 

 is as thickly settled as Jefferson County. There is another 

 phase of the agricultural condition of this section that should 

 not be overlooked and that is' the rapid way in which new farm- 

 ing territory is being opened. You see we have several saw 

 mills in Coffee County. One of them, the Henderson-Boyd 

 3 



