Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1895 — TOPICS OF THESE TIMES. [ARTICLE]

TOPICS OF THESE TIMES.

AN EXPLODED BUBBLE. There have been booms and there will be other booms. There have been a few booms partially successful and a great many more positive failures. But there have been but very few booms that have .so completely collapsed as that at Ft. Payne, Ala. The bottom has dropped completely out of this venture. The great iron mills and water works and public buildings of the most costly character can not even be rented $ for chicken roosts. A few elegant mansions that cost SIO,OOO each have been sold at the rate of Hsoper mansion. Other mansions nearly as desirable may be had on the same terms of a “mansion in the skies’’—for the asking, or by simple occupation. The town was established in 1889 by the Ft. Payne Coal and Iron Company, a syndicate of New England capitalists. For a time the enterprise promised well and was backed and promoted by men of undoubted Integrity and business capacity. The town was aid out and built up according to the most approved modern ideas. The people who were attracted and inluced to settle there were of the best jlass—intelligent, thrifty and ambitious. Every new arrival became an Enthusiastic advocate of the town, md money was made rapidly in real Estate ventures. A metropolitan lotel was built. Trained waiters

served the enraptured guests who were from time to time brought thither on great excursions from the Eastern seaboard.. Being near Lookjut Moantain the natural scenery proved a most efficient aid in floating the scheme. The reaction set in ibout five years ago. In the spring if 1891 the most prominent boomers quietly withdrew. From that time the exodus grew. The hotel was Hosed, the academy abandoned, all building suspended, ‘ the panic was complete,utter ruin resulted for hunireds of people, many becoming insane because of their losses. To-day every industry is idle, the machinery has been sold to pay the salaries of officials, and the whole town that cost more than $5,000,000 could be bought for $50,000, and there are no customers. A peculiar feature of the unfortunate enterprise is said to be that not one of the original projectors of Ft. Payne has profited by the speculation. All have suffered disastrously, having stuck to the enterprise until it was too late to extricate themselves. But one man is known to have cleared any money. He was a stranger, an outsider from n westeiti town, and had luck and judgment to “let go” in time, and left with $50,000 clear profit, having ?one to Ft. Payne at the start penniless. There is a possibility that capitalists may try to reanimate the slumbering and deserted town, out it will probably be some time before sufficient confidence can be gained to enable them to attract people in sufficient numbers to warrant any well founded hope that Ft. Payne will ever become a permanent ind important trade or manufacturing center.