Page 7 - Rumbaugh

Court Street Methodist Church.
In the past year we have seen the three largest western railroad systems, the St. Paul, Missouri Pacific, and the Atchison, going from bad to worse and from the looks of things the end is not yet.
In the south the railroads are crowded with traffic. Their stocks advance on the real development of the territory tributary to them.
The farms are not covered over with mortgages, but are as cheap as govern- ment lands, if you deduct the cost of improvements. It is quite natural to ask why are the lands so cheap, having railroads at hand, schools near, churches con- venient. The reason is simple. The gentry before the war considered a planta- tion the sign of their weight in the community. Their children held on to the idea, and being without the wealth of their ancestors, they have in many instan-
ces become land poor.
The visit,ors to this state must not judge of the land which they may see from
the car window as a sample of the rest. When these lines were built the owners of the fine farming districts were as one man opposed to the road being built through their lands. Hence the Norfolk and Western, and the Midland, run through an exceptionally poor country. On either of these roads one can find th~ finest farming lands three or four miles distant.