156 The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



country, we organized our land development and colonization 

 organization, which had for its purpose the standardizing of the 

 sale of land. The standardizing of the sale of land carried with 

 it the demonstration of what the land was capable of producing, 



Government and so that organization had to establish demonstration farms. 



Lends Valua- yj^ searched in every part of the country for all available ijifor- 

 mation, and the Departments of Agriculture have been untiring 

 in their efforts to give us assistance. In fact, they have sent 

 men down time and again to answer, perhaps, the same question ; 

 and we in Florida feel greatly indebted to them. They have 

 taught us what grasses to grow ; they have taught us the use and 

 advantages of the dipping vat ; and the lumbermen in Florida have 

 taken steps for the raising of $50,000 a year, spending $150,000 over 

 a period of three years, in a statewide campaign of tick eradica- . 

 tion ; and this was through the initiative of the Southern Settlement 

 and Development organization, co-operating with the Department 

 of the State and our largest land owners in the state. Mr. P. L. 

 Sutherland, who represents one of the largest land owners in the 

 state, has very ably helped the work ; and, gentlemen, I have merely 

 mentioned these facts so as to suggest to the various other states 

 represented here that in the solution of this great problem we real- 

 ized, in Florida, that the most necessary step, first, was a state 

 organization ; and we are now ready to step into any organization 

 that is formed for the betterment of the South. 



J. Lewis Thompson : On behalf of the cut-over land owners 

 who called this meeting, I want to say — and I don't believe I am 

 the most intelligent, but I believe I am about the average — I 

 want to say to you men here today that the reason we are here 

 is because we do not know. We are groping in the dark. Re- 

 gardless of our railroad friends — they have always felt like 

 whenever they wanted to say most anything they went to the lum- 

 bermen and got by with it. I think our railroad friend there 

 was talking to me and to these others, because I am used to that 

 kind of talk coming from the railroads. 



I want to say, on behalf of the land owners, that we are in 

 the dark, and in their behalf I want to say that we have had a 

 most instructive and the best papers that I have ever heard in 

 any meeting; and my only regret is that our entire organization 

 could not have heard every paper read here, because I believe that 

 before we can go down to the point of forming some kind of an 

 organization permanently, what we must do is to tell you what 



