Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1920 — SOUTHERN PORT IS BLOCKADED [ARTICLE]

SOUTHERN PORT IS BLOCKADED

Attempt to Land Telegraph Cable at Miami Brings About Queer Situation. MIAMI IS IN THE LIMELIGHT United State* Warships Blockade a United States Port In Time of Peace—Geographic Society Official Tells About Place. By JOHN OLIVER LA GORCE. Vice-Director National Geographic Society., Miami, Fla. —Probably for the first time since the stirring days of the Civil war we find a southern port blockaded by United States warships. Happily, however, It Is no crisis brought about by an uncompromising demand for the integrity of state rights, but to prevent a cable ship entering the port of Miami, the most southerly city on the Floridian mainland and the third largest in the state, from the standpoint of population. Nestling beside the beautiful waters of Biscayne bay and separated from the Atlantic only by the peninsula of Miami bench, the city has rapidly come into its own, due to the strategic geographic location it occupies on the coast, and it gives promise to rival Jacksonville as a port of call. \Vhen one realizes that one-third of all the grapefruit in Jhe United States comes from the county in which Miami is situated and that one-fifth of all the animal life tn America north of Panama is to be found in the waters of the Gulf stream which lave the golden strand of Miami beach in its front yard, and with the great potential agricultural wealth of the Everglades at its back door, small wonder that Miami hqs grown, as shown by the last census report, 440 per cent.

Rivals the Riviera. Blessed with a year-round climate that rivals the Riviera, with everblowing trade winds that' temper the semi-tropical sun, Miami bids fair to take rank with anything of its size In the United States for development along highly profitable and thoroughly businesslike lines. It is not surprising that a telegraph company desires to bring the Barbados cables into Miami instead of Key West, a hundred odd miles south of this point; but there is some diplomatic hitch about England’s control of cables which has caused this pratically unheard of situation of United States war vessels blockading a United states port in the time of peace. Three years ago the money on de‘poslt In the banking Institutions of Miami amounted to something like $4,000,00(5, In the summer of 1919 to $12,000,000, in March, 1920, to $17,000,000, and today the amount Is upward of $20,000,000. Moreover, in permanent population It has grown in ten years from 5,471 to 29,549. During the winter months there are nearly as many traffic “cops” on Its well-payed streets as there are in the national capital, ten times Its size. One of the most Important developments of Miami beach bl the/inauguratlon and completion of the Miami aquarium and biological laboratory, located at the beach terminus of the wonderful 100-foot causeway stretching three miles In length which spans Blscayne bay, connecting the city with the ocean beaches. As the scientists generally agree that all land animals came originally out of the sea. the study of the myriad forms of life in the tropical seas will, it is believed, develop links between the sea and land animals that will add much to the world’s knowledge of this important question. Since the question of food has been accentuated as an aftermath of the world war, the eyes of economists have turned to the warm seas to develop the possibilities of its innumerable fish life. New Species of Tuna.

Just as the shoemaker’s child is proverbially without footwear, so it was that 'there was no aquarium or biological station on the entire Atlantic coast south of Philadelphia, and, consequently, no extensive and adequately equipped and .situated Institution to which the ichthyologists of the country could make pilgrimages and study at first hand the wonders of the fauna of the Gulf stream. Heretofore 'these specialists in zoology traveled to the aquarium at Naples, Italy, and to other European Institutions, singly because .there was nowhere In the warm seas surrounding the southern part of our own continent a place where they have the means at hand to pursue their highly Important work. Only a mAnth or two ago, an entirely new species of tuna, one of the most valuable food fishes in the world, was located and described by the director of the Miami aquarium, and if these great fishes of the horsemackerel family can be developed in a commercial way It will have an interesting bearing on the problem of lowering the high cost of living,