Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1918 — 'MOST BEAUTIFUL I EVER SAW' [ARTICLE]

'MOST BEAUTIFUL I EVER SAW'

Is Fred Phillips Comment on the Country About Demopolis, Ala. Auctioneer Fred Phillips, who returned last week from a trip to near Demopolis, Alabama, where he cried a big public sale for M. I. Adams & Son, was much taken up with the country about Demopolis, and says It Is absolutely the finest looking country he has ever seen. As Fred has been about over these United States considerably and has visited most all sections of the great Northwest, this statement is a great compliment Indeed to that section of Alabama. Mr. Phillips did not stay there as long as he would have desired, as he had to get back for the John R. Lewis Hampshire hog sale, but he Improved the time and got about quit© a little. This section Is known as the “Black Belt." It Is a gently rolling country, and he states that he never saw anything prettier. The plantation homes are large, roomy, beautiful colonial style dwellings and are usually located on an eminence with large cedar trees about them. Artesian wells are quite common.

There is plenty of disintogiated limestone in the soil and alfalfa, Johnson and Bermuda grass grows very prollflcally. They also raise corn, oats, wheat, cow peas, soy beans, etc., and the plantations are covered with fine herds of pure-bred cattle. The alfalfa was about four inches high when he was there. This section of country, it seems, was devoted to the culture of cotton for generation after generation by the old timers, who were gradually put out of business by the boll weevil; but they stuck to cotton until they lost their land, many of them. Northern people have come in and bought many of these plantations arid cut out the cotton growing. They are raising alfalfa and other forage crops and purebred cattle. Wherever one sees a plantation occupied by a northern man, Mr. Phillips says, there you find progress and prosperity. Alfalfa is raised as easily as we raise oats in Indiana and brings in large returns. Mr. Phillips told of one man there who had sold fifteen car loads of alfalfa this season at $32 per ton, realizing SBO per acre oft land that he bought five years ago at $35 per acre. While there Mr. Phillips saw Sam Sparling, formerly of Rensselaer, and says that Sam has gn, 800-acre plantation, with a large, beautiful home. -He has a fine big Holstein dairy herd, and has had numerous offers for his plantation, which he purchased only a few years ago, and could sell out at a profit of $50,000 over what he paid for it. On his plantation he has about seventy-five negroes. Arthur Shedd, also formerly of Rensselaer, has a considerable larger plantation and is doing fine. In fact, Mr. Phillips states, this is one of the most prosperous looking section of the country I have ever seen and I think it has a great future before it. The top price for land there now is about S9O per acre, but he thinks that it will be $l5O per acre within a comparatively short time. The Adams’ sale totalled $10,200, and SIO,OOO of this was cash. As the property was all sold to people right in that neighborhood, the fact that so much was for cash is indicative of the general prosperity of the people thereabout.