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Florida Recovering from Its Depression
- University of South Carolina Press
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Florida Recovering from Its Depression The Orange Freeze of 1894–5 a Blessing Other Industries Now Coming Into Being—The Orange Groves Are Slowly Being Restored to Their Former Richness—The Cattle Ranges Changed Into Individual Ranches—A Revival of the Old Project to Drain the Everglades Orlando, Fla., March 23 Even to a Southerner, Florida still seems a trifle foreign. It is an effect to which both the tropical flora and the Yankee tourist contribute.The peninsula is a sort of any man’s land.In this little town,for example,I am told that about half the constant population is made up of native Southerners, and nearly all the other half of Northern people. There is no part of the country without its representatives. Besides, there are here today about 2000 “transients.” The gentleman who gave me this information is himself an Englishman. Of his own people there have always been a considerable number in Florida ever since the time when it was a British province. He frankly admits, however , that the Englishmen who come in nowadays do not shine as investors. Published in the Boston Evening Transcript, March 30, 1904. Florida Recovering from Its Depression 51 It is the same story one hears in Canada, in Texas, and in the West. The Englishman—particularly the young Englishman of good family—coming into a new country with a little capital does not seem to hold his own with American speculators and promoters. Before he begins to establish himself in some industry his capital is likely to disappear. Florida of today is decidedly a new country—newer than the Florida of eight years ago, and far newer than the Florida of 1860. It is, in fact, about eight years old. Everything dates from the winter of 1894–5. The beginning was the great freeze. Many can be heard to declare that the calamity was a blessing in disguise, because it forced the people to discover some of the infinite number of uses to which the land could be put besides the growing of oranges. I doubt, however, if this view is popular among those whose orange trees were killed. My English friend here drove me through a beautiful orchard that has grown up since 1895 and is now bearing abundantly, but he grinned ruefully when I advanced the “blessing-in-disguise” theory. He would rather have someone else furnish the next object lesson. And it is hard to believe that the diversification of agriculture would not have come about by this time if there had not been those two shrewdly illtimed cold snaps in the winter of 1894–5. The common belief is, by the way, that to kill orange trees two freezes the same season are required. They will recover from the first, but the second is fatal.1 It is hard to understand why Florida has been until the last two or three decades, so backward even as compared with the other Southern States. Perhaps the explanation is that it never was a good country for the big-plantation system. Its principal crops are not the great cereals and staples. It is hardly correct to say that it has any principal crops at all. It was from the first clearly destined for the small farm, for highly intensified culture, and for many and various crops. This has not been, until very recent years, the Southern way of handling the land. It is the only way in Florida, however, and now that it has been discovered people of all sorts are falling into it so generally that the statistician must find the changes of land holdings and in the proportion of the several crops extremely interesting. The average holding in 1900 was less than one-fourth what it was in 1860.2 But the great freeze keeps the figures for the decade from 1890 to 1900 from being really indicative of present conditions and tendencies. Moreover, the ever increasing winter travel in Florida, and the temporary residence there of so many rich people will for a long time to come have to be taken into account when one tries to study the State through statistics. It is necessary to go there, and if possible to get away from the tourist hotels,in order to find out what people are doing who live there all the year round. They themselves, by the way, very much prefer the tourist of [44.212.39.149] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20...