140 THK ALABAMA (JPPOUTU N I TY. 



northern portion, the section near the Hne of the Central of 

 Georgia, which offers the most persuasive invitation. The 

 white section is already strong and contented, and lands are 

 held at a higher figure. 



Barbour's invitation. 



But in the northern portion l.'uids arc cheap, roads are good, 

 railroad facilities arc convenient, the social life is already 

 made and of a high order, and the climate is nothing short of 

 a beneficent smile of nature. For periods as long as four and 

 five years no s'now has fallen upon these hills, and it is a rare 

 thing for this section of Alabama to have two snows in two 

 successive years. Cattle can be pastured out in the open the 

 whole year round. Man himself might live an outdoors and 

 tented life the year round and suffer no great hardship. The 

 days in winter when water freezes" are seldom and rare. Even 

 the summers are not so exacting as those of States further 

 north, for the heat is not so intense and sudden, although the 

 summer may be longer and the breezes' from the Gulf, only a 

 few miles away, tempers the most trying summer the State 

 ever has. 



Rich as are the State's mineral deposits, as fertile as are its 

 farming acres, its' splendid climate is probablv its best exhibit. 



It was' a busy dav in the building of the Clayton Banking 

 Company, a wide and roomy building and a building that one 

 would think was too spacious for a bank in a town the size of 

 Clayton. But it was a place of no little business. A steady 

 stream of cotton buyers and cotton sellers poured through the 

 doors and eddied up against the cashier's window. The cotton 

 buyer pays for the Southern staple in checks and the cotton 

 seller has a trip to the bank after he has thrown his bales off 

 at the warehouses and had them weighed. 



Each of the units that formed the stream at the cashier's' 

 window had one of these cotton buyer's checks. I had been 

 £1 the wdndow for a talk with Cashier Browder Pruett. I was 

 taking the interview in broken doses, inasmuch as I was con- 

 stantly giving place to the man with the check at the window. 

 It wa5 a fortunate circumstance withal. I not only was getting 

 information upon Barbour County conditions, but I was getting 

 information on the man with the check, who was the central 

 fio-nre, the "Exhibit A" in these same conditions. 



