The article goes into detail about race that is offensive, however, it is still a historically significant piece of Florida writing so I have decided to publish it on the blog.
You do not see all of Florida from the tourist standpoint. These flitters constitute a wonderful tribe, steadily flowing in and out of the State, by three or four main lines of cars, and by three lines of ocean vessels.
They begin about the first of December and the hotels are crowded by the middle of that month. Every train unloads a caravan, all furnished with guns, and with fishing tackle, although I have discovered that very few of them know either how to shoot or fish. They are of the Bowser sort largely, and are possessed of very queer notions about having fun. They know little or nothing of the State, even after they have been there for five or six years in succession, and I hear from some of them that they have spent nearer twenty winters in Florida. They go all around the Coast, spending money at the costly resorts, and congratulating themselves as if the joys of this world were measured by the amount of money that goes out of pocket.
Palm Beach is the paradise of this sort of people; it really is a marvel of tropical beauty, and Mr. Flagler is no more celebrated for his railroad activities than for what he has done to turn this place into a Garden of Eden. It is the Mecca of tourists, and no one thinks he has seen Florida till he has spent a few days at Palm Beach. It has the advantage of entire lack of conscience in hotel charges, and has the knack of sifting out the millionaires from common travelers; yet it is a wonderful place that everyone should see. When peripatetics have got through with about three months of winter, and money-spending, along these Coast counties, the mosquitoes set in upon them, and drive them pellmell out of the State.
I find that very few of them ever learn that there is a backbone to Florida, made up of high rolling land, where every hollow is a beautiful lake; a land where the mosquito is sometimes seen but has no control, and where the climate is equable all the year roundthat is, the summers are fully as endurable as the winters–I think more so. Nor do these professional tourists know anything about the industries of the State, beyond the fact that oranges grow in Florida, and that grape fruit is served on their hotel menu twice a day. They possibly have acquired some slight knowledge of some of the semi-tropical fruits, like the avocado, and the loquat and the pineapple.
I have told the readers of THE OUTING MAGAZINE about my own winter garden and orange grove, but there remains a phase of agriculture in the State quite as remarkable as anything that can be discovered about the orange orchards; I mean the trucking business. This consists in the growing of early vegetables for the Northern market, and a succession of later vegetables, making three or four crops from a single plat of land. Florida has this unrivaled advantage, that whatever may be undertaken by any other State to the North, even Georgia, we can get our potatoes and vegetables and fruit into Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, or Chicago at least two weeks ahead of any rival. This peninsula, thrust by Nature down into the tropic seas, and watered by showers from both the Atlantic and the Gulf, can defy all the gardens in the world. It has no competition outside its own boundaries, and it is learning co-operation inside its limits. Northerners are finding out this, and are very rapidly taking up hundreds of new acres every year.
The trucking section consists of flat land and rather moist; there are large parts of it that must be drained before they can be put to use. The soil is sandy, but very rich in vegetable matter, much of it almost black. These parts of Florida characterized by the palm, have not been annually burned over, like the pine section , and so have gone on accumulating humus of a very fine quality and a great depth, while the soil below is in need of nothing but heaving up to the sunshine.
With proper culture these lands need not be exhausted of fertility in a thousand years. It is a land of small farms, where five acres makes a good-sized homestead, and more likely the owner will be satisfied with what he can get out of one or two acres. Trucking means the intensest culture conceivable. I have heard this black land called Klondike, meaning that it is a mine of wealth. It is a garden in the highest sense of the word.
After you have entered the State and landed at Jacksonville, you can continue your way southward either by any one of three or four lines or cars, or you can take a boat up the St. John’s River, which will land you at Sanford or Enterprise, as the end of navigation. It is one of the most thoroughly delightful trips afforded any where in the United States.
The small steamer winds its way under the sharp eye of a thoroughly trained pilot, following the navigable channel that twists about through a vegetation of the most picturesque and wonderful sort conceivable. Not for two consecutive minutes is the outlook the same. You are in fact simply boating it through tropical forests. The mosses hang down from the trees almost to the smokestack in places, and again the river widens out into a lake, through which you cut your way in the morning sunshine, with ducks in the water and birds overhead, but nowhere a sign that a human being is on the globe apart from the boat. The wilderness is absolute. Then again the channel narrows until you are almost plunging into the wild flowers that literally cover the banks; in fact you are at times among the water hyacinths, that have clogged so many Southern streams with their beauty.
Here and there lonesome cabins have been built out on rude piers of logs, and as it is morning you will see the Cracker with his fish pole catching his breakfast out of the river, while his wife kindles a blaze of free driftwood. Neighbors there are none; he looks like a possible Robinson Crusoe. Alligators occasionally lift their noses, and the wealth of wild flowers climbing the trees and tressing the groves together is something marvelous. This trip will be a part of your dream life forever. On and on you go through the laughing lagoons, rarely touching at towns or railroad landings, but occasionally hearing the railroad whistle through some gap in the forest, and once in a while, where the land lies rolling or high, catching a glimpse of orange orchards that indicate a town not far off. For clean, unbroken romance give me a trip up the St. John’s.
On the morning of the second day you will reach Sanford, and this is the very heart of the trucking section. You land in a beautiful park, where the palms predominate, but there are orange trees and grape fruit and other semi-tropical fruits growing all about you. The hotel shows that the railroads have gone beyond this point, to exploit the more unique Coast sections, and are carrying the bulk of tourists farther on. The town also bears signs of having been under a deep depression, owing to the orange freeze of 1895. You see, however, some signs of a new impulse. The streets are abundantly supplied with great fountains that throw up waters strong with sulphur. Horses like this water fairly well and many people become fond of it. It is certainly wholesome. There is flatness everywhere. At the depot we see cars laden with lettuce and celery or with cabbage. There is no time when you will not see more or less of this freightage, but the bulk of the shipments are in January and April.
You will be invited to stroll or to ride out into the surrounding country. One mile, two miles, three miles, four miles, and yet you have seen nothing but celery and lettuce, and the negroes and Crackers who are cultivating the fields. As fast as the crop is pulled another is planted. The system of irrigation is simple, for water can be obtained in the form of flowing wells by boring or digging from twelve to twenty feet. The whole country seems to be a floating island. That large sums of money are being made is evident, although one must not believe the advertisements which reach the North. Celery land is not worth thousands of dollars per acre, certainly not as a rule, and no one should invest in this trucking section until he has seen the land and studied the conditions. It is attractive business, mainly because it is quick money. It takes an orange grove ten years to become exceedingly profitable, but a lettuce crop brings in money inside of six months.
There are many people who are better adapted to this sort of gardening than to fruit growing, for the problems are less, and less intricate. The insect enemies are fewer, and there remains just this one great danger, a freeze. You may be sure that there will be a touch of frost once or twice every winter, and there is pretty sure to be a bad freeze once in four or five years.
Occasionally a whole crop is swept out; thousands of dollars by a single breath of a Northern blizzard. The next day the sun comes out warm and the winds blow in from the ocean, but the mischief is done–lots of work put to naught in a night. The truckers can afford this once in awhile, but not too often. I do not know of any other place either in Florida or elsewhere where gardening literally covers the face of the earth; but here in Sanford the dooryard is a celery bed, and the back yard is another. In one place I found the street side cultivated down to the ditch, but wild phlox Drummond’s was smiling up through the paths as a sort of apology for such close domestic economy. It was an admirable way of getting rid of street weeds.
I was invited by a doctor from Pennsylvania, who had gone South for his health, to go out a couple of miles and visit his cucumber houses. I did this the more cheerfully because I wished to know about growing other crops under cover. I had heard a good deal about pineapple culture of this sort, but so far as I had been able to observe, this sort of pineapple growing had been given up through central Florida. I found that my friend had erected very substantial sheds, covering I think something over an acre and a half. Instead of roofs he had arranged rolls of canvas, and a handy mechanical contrivance to unroll these and draw them over the sheds in case of danger.
He was planning to grow the new American Wonder Lemon, a remarkable affair that bears lemons weighing from one to two pounds each, on bushy trees of not more than ten feet in height. This lemon was originated in Baltimore a few years ago, and up to the present time is grown mostly in pots in Northern homes. It has not been experimented with much, as yet, as a market fruit. Its quality is superb, and a tree hanging full is a sight to go far to look at. Its very size may, however, debar it from special value in the market. The cucumber sheds were supplied with brick heaters, in which a fire could be quickly started, made of pine knots, and heat generated sufficiently to keep the atmosphere considerably above the freezing point.
Florida is nearly as large as all New England, and of course there is a great diversity of employment. In the northern counties corn, wheat, oats, peaches, pears and apples dominate; in the center we find most of these products growing side by side with oranges, lemons, loquats, sweet potatoes and cassava; and in the southern counties we are among pineapples avocados and other strictly tropical fruits and vegetables.
The trucking region is therefore closely associated with orange growing and other citrus products. You cannot drive anywhere about Sanford without coming upon yards that are filled with these golden fruits. Grape fruit hanging six inches in diameter and in huge clusters bends its trees over sometimes to the very soil. Peaches are as common as oranges, and when you get a little nearer the hilly or sloping lands to the west, large peach orchards stand in January and February bursting into bloom. In March you will find a few ripe fruits, but the marketable crop comes not earlier than April and May.
The mulberry fills up March, and is the first one of the Southern fruits to ripen. You will find it everywhere; varieties that do not seem to have found any place in our Northern gardens as yet. The fruit is from one to two inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Nearly every bird in the heavens and every animal on the earth likes the mulberry, and for my part a mulberry pie is the only rival I have ever yet found for a blackberry pie. My whole being turns into a poem when I think of it. You should have just pulp enough not to let the juice run away, and the pie shows no sign of stinginess.
This is the way with Florida, that while one industry predominates there is enough else going on to widen out life and make a complete home. With all the rest, of course the St. John’s River furnishes a magnificent fishing ground. With the celery and the lettuce are shipped carloads of eggplant and more or less Irish potatoes.
One lot on Celery Avenue reports one acre in eggplants, shipping 403 crates, and netting $ 1.25 per crate; one acre in cauliflower, shipping 300 crates, and netting $1.75 per crate; one acre in cucumbers, shipping 500 crates and netting $1.00 per crate. But, mark you, these three acres were all one acre, and the crops were raised in succession.
The owner writes: “I have now a fine crop of corn on the same land. “The rule is the same with celery and lettuce, that after shipping three crops, crab grass comes up spontaneously, making splendid autumn fodder, after which the grass is plowed under to add humus to the soil. Another grower reports that he had four acres of celery, from which he shipped 2,000 crates, that netted $1.25 per crate. The same grower had ten acres in tomatoes, from which he shipped 2,000 crates, and netted $1.40 per crate.
From the central counties of the State one may gather reports nearly or quite as attractive, but the products shipped are mainly tomatoes, potatoes, cabbages and melons from the garden, and oranges with grape fruit and peaches from the orchard. The loquat would constitute a splendid article of commerce if it were not too tender for shipment. It is a delicious fruit, ripening all winter; combining the shape of a small pear with the general flavor of a cherry. It is blossoming and ripening during three or four months. The tree is very handsome and the blossoms are highly perfumed. The fruit hangs in large clusters. My impression is that tomato growing and sweet potato growing have by no means reached their maximum, and that the future will develop trucking in this direction enormously. There is a fascination about the growing of celery that leads to an over-stocked market. The prices of one year are not by any means a certain gauge for all years.
Who is doing the work, and is help always obtainable? The negro is a fairly good grade of citizen in every respect. He is not an Anglo-Saxon, and most of the grumbling about him comes from a grade of citizen himself off somewhat from the highest standard. Take the black man as an African, allow somewhat for his instincts, and something more for his superstitions, and you will find him generally industrious, possessed of a little property, and a gentleman. I have not yet met a colored man in Florida who was not courteous. Is it instinct; or is it due to lack of provocation? To me he is a man, and he knows very quickly when he is treated as such. It is a very small sample of humanity that is compelled to prove his superiority to a negro. More than this the black man is a Southern necessity. The South cannot exist without him. The American problem is labor, more help; and this is the same North and South. is needed by the orange grower and by the truck grower, and he is needed also by the migratory farmer who spends only his winters in the South.
The best farmer that I have seen in Florida is a Cracker. With all the peculiarities of his class, he is a careful observer, and quick to apply what lessons he learns. This man runs a milk route, manages several large orange groves, and does a good deal of truck gardening in the bargain. His judgment is inquisitive, but quick and decisive, and his speech is something of the same sort. Roused from their apathy the Crackers make a sort of Southern Yankee. With this exception the most enterprising native that I have discovered is a coal-black African. Caesar is highly respected by all classes , for his forceful and prompt, and every way executive tact.
Our lakes constitute sounding boards, and you can hear this fellow half a mile away talking to his mules as he plows, alternately singing a negro melody. Just at this moment I hear him shout, “You old fool mule! Can’t you see youse all wrong there? I sure is ashamed of any mule that can’t run a straight furrow!” Then another melody rises over the water, followed and interlarded with more objurgations. They tell me that at adolesence this fellow broke out as, and for a year or two remained, all nigger. I think I understand the whites of the South, and am confident that the negro problem is safe in their hands.
My plowman is a negro preacher; and his sermons are more nearly up to the times than those preached in the churches for white people, by white ministers. He is a good observer, has keen sympathy with nature, and I should say that for level common sense a sort of everyday washable religion, Reverend Cole is above the average of white preachers. He does not shout at his horse, for he tells me his religion is practical, a thing for every day life, “Jes to make a man better, Sah! that’s all. I reckon nobody knows so very much about another world, Sah! and they might as well not bother themselves too much beyond their knowledge.”
Yet the black man has had every conceivable disadvantage. He cannot take advantage of a common church or a common school. There is something in the atmosphere that informs him that he is an inferior. Yet every day I see negroes going by my house, who walk at least two miles with their axes and dinner pails to work, and these fellows are always on time in the morning, nor do they return to their homes before six o’clock at night.
They are distinguished for orderly behavior and straightforwardness. That a negro likes steady employment such as is afforded by factories I do not affirm, but he makes a good field hand and a good truck gardener. He is instinctively less fond than the Anglo-Saxon of laying up a large amount of property for the future. Just enough satisfies him, and this he will cheerfully share with his neighbors. One peculiarity is that he will never go to work on the day that he is sent for, but always “tomorrow.”
The Cracker is a good ways from being the worthless character that he has been represented to be, and the black man is talked about a great deal too much. Let him alone until he can work out some of his instincts, and he will make a fairly good partner in the industries that the South is rapidly developing. The Cracker has bitter prejudices and slouchy ways, but he is capable of progress quite as certainly as the New Englander type. Folk who have been drilled in Massachusetts or New York, or after the Chicago method, must learn that they do not constitute the only type of industry. I have at no time been put out for lack of help in my fields nor do I observe that the truck gardeners lack for laborers.
Around Sanford I noticed that the fields are supplied about equally with blacks and whites as laborers. A good many Germans are found there at work, and they invariably make a good thing of it. An Italian is a novelty, but he is gradually working his way Southward. The speculative interest in Florida has very largely left the orange-growing sections and concentrated about truck growing.
Yet for the most part these lands are owned and run by residents. It must, however, be borne in mind that the land is entirely level, and that in wet seasons they are liable to be overflowed for several days at a time. The climate is not always healthy, and by no means compares with the central part of the State for equability of temperature, while there is no such freedom from insect pests.
At the famous resorts the mosquito becomes master of the situation during all the warmer months. It is impossible to remain there after the first of April without protecting your face, and using other precautions not entirely unknown in some sections of the North.
My own partiality for the hilly section is so strong that I would not own a whole county of flat land or Coast land if it were given to me with the provision that I must occupy it through the whole year. In the center of the State we have no more mosquitoes than we have in central New York, and not so many as in Michigan and Indiana.
I quite agree with Mr. Laughlin, of Pittsburg, whose ninety-thousand-dollar establishment is on another of the small lakes not far from my own, that probably the world does not hold a more wholesome section for homes than the lake and hilly region of central Florida. No one need to leave during the hotter months, for at this season there are cool breezes every day from either the Atlantic or the Gulf, and there are daily showers. April is counted the least agreeable of all the months, because the temperature rises a good deal of the time to eighty-five, ninety or even ninety-five, while a shower is a rare thing. We are still eating oranges, however, and we do not find gardening at all oppressive before eleven o’clock in the morning and after three in the afternoon. We soon form the habit of taking long noonings in our hammocks.
I prefer the less speculative and quiet ventures here among the lakes. We can grow all the celery and lettuce that we want for home use, in the bottom lands that border the lakes; and there is considerable shipment of these products. But on the slopes and high lands we grow to better advantage melons and fruit. The demand for these is always good either in Cincinnati or in Jacksonville.
A Northern farmer can begin at once with hens, turkeys and ducks, if he likes this sort of employment, and his broilers and eggs will find a good demand in the larger cities. One of my neighbors has been very successful with bees, taking up two thousand pounds in the winter; returning them to his Ohio home where he takes up another two thousand pounds during the summer. This incomparable advantage we have, that we are not only making money, but are establishing homes and securing health.
The timber is almost exclusively pine, and you are working all day in or near pine groves. There is no swamp or anything like it, unless it be where a sluggish branch of the Suwanee or Ocala winds its way westward.
However, the migratory farmer is not to be guided by my tastes, nor will his movements be altogether controlled by climatic conditions. In many cases what he wants is money, and this need must control his movements. Trucking is quick work and results are immediate. He can always buy land that is already broken and ready for cropping. Prices will be much higher and profits will accrue in like proportion.
In the hilly section good homesteads can be secured for from ten to forty dollars per acre; around Sanford good celery land runs up into the hundreds, and I am told even thousands per acre. In neither case should a Northerner believe the advertiser and make an investment of any size before he has seen the property involved.
