THE ALABAMA OPrORTUNlTY. 59 



A railroad is not a philanthropic institution. It is 

 not given to making experiments, or to developing 

 wildernesses. The only reason a railroad is ever run- through 

 a wilderness is to connect two rich sections which may be far 

 or near each other. When branch lines are thrown out, there 

 musi: be somethnig on which both the branch and the system 

 are to feed 



The ap-'ic ".lUral dLvelopment of the Wiregrass had as- 

 sumed notable proportions before the surveyors and the track 

 lii\ ers went to work. Turpentine men and lumber men were, 

 as they have ever been in the development of South Alabama 

 and South Georgia, the advance guard of progress. The tur- 

 pentine men were blazing their way through the interminable 

 acres with their short, sharp axes and gathering their harvests 

 of white encrusted pearls from the trees. The lumbermen were 

 leveling the pine forests and shipping out over log roads cargo 

 after cargo of white and shining pine. But these were only 

 industrial caravansaries, which stopped for a night and a day 

 and passed on. 



Progress never came to a section on a log road. Nor was 

 it ever brought in cooped up in a turpentine still. 



THE settler's WAGON. 



The white canvas wagon cover of the incoming settler is 

 the flag of hope for the County and for the State. Such a 

 wagon with its canvass covering,forming a protection for a 

 half dozen tow-headed children, a couple of 'possum dogs 

 tied with a rope to the rear axle, an assortment of pots and 

 kettles decorating the hind end of the wagon, driven by a man 

 with a bushy beard and cow-hide boots would, in the minds of 

 many people cut but a sorry figure on Dexter Avenue. Yet a 

 replica of this outfit so imperfectly described might well stand 

 for an emblem of Alabama's growth. More than any other 

 single thing, unless it is the locomotive, it has hauled brain and 

 brawn, progress and prosperity into Alabama., and in doing so 

 it surmounted more obstacles than the locomotive, and the 

 locomotive only came along the way the canvas wagon has 

 prepared. 



In such a way came the development of the Wiregrass. 

 In such a way was brought the foundation of its prosperity. 



