Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1915 — NEWLAND IS AGAIN TO HAVE BIG BOOM [ARTICLE]

NEWLAND IS AGAIN TO HAVE BIG BOOM

One Hundred Families to Come to Jasper County and Many New Houses Will Be Built. Ed Oliver brought four men from Chicago Sunday and sold each a tract of land at Newland. In all there have been 103 purchasers so far this winter, thirty-three at Newland and seventy at the Springer ranch near Kniman. Every buyer will come or send some one to truck the land this summer and fifty or more, Mr. Oliver thinks more, will erect new houses. Most of the houses will be cheaply constructed, four room buildings, being erected with a view to housing the owners through the trucking season. All of the buyers in Newland are of native birth, but practically all who have purchased on the Springer ranch are foreigners, Roumanians, Belgians and Polanders. They are a class of hard working and ambitious foreigners, who have saved money while working in the city and who will make good citizens and will do much toward building up the almost wasted lands of the springer ranch. Mr. Oliver says that if weather conditions are favorable there will be 500 acres of onions put out at Newland within the next five weeks and there will be a lot more put out on the Springer .ranch. Some of the newcomers will put out other vegetables, having had experience as gardeners.

The housebuilding will begin at about the time the onions are planted. Some of the purchasers have arranged to have one head carpenter to come down and assist them in building their own homes. There will be a great hum of industry from all appearances. Most of those who were at Newland last year will return, in fact, every land owner, according to Mr. Oliver, will again be on the job. Most of the renters will also be there again and a number of new renters. They are coming in now every day and getting shaped up for the spring. The plans for a canning factory have not materialized, having been considered too late to have a factory installed this year. Several owners of canning factories, however, have been consulted and Mr. Oliver believes it will be better to have a branch factory there instead of starting a new factory that will have to build up its business. There are so many canning factories that the marketing of the product is an important feature. To realize fully from the truck lands that have been opened up a canning factory Is almost an essential and Mr. Oliver will doubtless have one far by another year. The land selling has by no means stopped for this year. Mr. Oliver expects to have many more purchasers and will, bring them down in bunches from now until the middle of April, when the selling activity will probably ease up until next fall. The work of Mr. Oliver in the development of the Newland and Laura sections of the county is the most important work since Benjamin Gifford began to buy and drain the large acreage of waste lands. Mr. Oliver is a young man, full of spirit and hustle, and he has accomplished by these sales a thing that hardly a man in a million could have 'done. He is today the greatest booster in Jasper county and should be given the encouragement of all who are interested in having Jas-

per county grow. When the marketing opportunities are opened to the muck soil, country as they will be with the extension of the Gifford branch of the Monon the section that is to present so much activity this spring will be the most important adjacent to Chicago.