On the Map

When that tired old Spaniard, Juan Ponce de Leon, landed with flags and thirst and prayers of thanksgiving upon the southeastern strand of North America, he at once inquired after a specific against old age and mortality--a miracle-flowing spring of everlasting youth and happiness.

Later generations of tired men found out that Florida's sunshine, fruits and seabathing were far more efficacious than her hidden springs of sulphurous water for reviving the liver and circulation.

Rich men first, then poor men in thankful thousands, flocked to the southeastern U. S. and made it a sanitorium, then a playground. Financial vicissitudes naturally resulted from the influx of people ready to spend money freely for on those dearest objects of life--health and fun. Violent hurricanes came, too, to interrupt the development of a winter paradise. But now the crazy land-booms have subsided. The damage of the latest hurricanes is repaired and future damage provided against more carefully. The visits this year of the country's two leading figures, the outgoing Coolidge and the incoming Hoover, help to date a new prosperity in Florida and the whole Southeast.

The Southeast is increasingly accessible. By rail, Jacksonville is only 25 hours from New York, 35 from Chicago, 36 from St. Louis. Miami is about eight hours further. A half-day nearer the North are Pinehurst, Camden, Asheville, Aiken, Augusta, where the Southeast begins. One can take ship from Boston to Charleston or from New York to Miami or Savannah. P: Southbound golfers often head for the places where their favorite professionals hold forth. At Pinehurst are Donald and Alec Ross; at Augusta, Dave and Alec Ogilvie; at Belleair, Alex Smith. Gene Sarazen is at New Port Ritchey, Fla. At Miami Beach is Willie Klein; at St. Augustine, National Open Champion Johnny Farrell. Jock Hutchison is still a fixture at Nassau in the offshore Bahamas.

P: The pheasants and wild turkeys slain last week by President Coolidge at Sapeloe (see page 9) were a luxurious but not misleading sample of what the Southeast offers to gunners. Almost anywhere from Virginia to mid-Florida, quail abound. Wild-fowling in the Carolinas--duck, geese, brant--is a sport of moderate temperatures, unlike the cold-blown shooting of northern rivers and bays. When Mr. Hoover visits Mr. Penney at Belle Isle shortly, accounts of Southeastern fishing will doubtless go forth, though the tarpon, greatest of Southeastern game-fish, is caught off Florida's west coast.

P: Where Spaniards looked for gold and life-everlasting and pirates later lolled at ease amid hidden booty, U. S. tycoons of today have built winter mansions and game preserves. The Penney estate at Belle Isle, though it views Miami's skyscrapers across Biscayne Bay, is as secluded as any nest that a pirate ever made for himself on Bimimi or the Dry Tortugas. The late Henry M. Flagler, founder of Florida's perpetual youth, was not the first modern tycoon to visit the Southeast and his railroad and hotels meant more to the commonalty than to Mr. Flagler's fellow rich men. The real pioneers of Tycoon's Coast were the group that formed the Jekyl Island Club in 1886, some 200 families, including Morgans, Goulds, Rockefellers, Drexels. Carnegies. John D. Rockefeller's life-perpetuating estate and private golf course at Ormond came later.

P: One of the oldest estates on Tycoon's Coast is that of Bernard Mannes Baruch at Georgetown, S. C. He inherited it from his father, who was a surgeon on the staff of General Robert E. Lee.

P: Industrial-minded Henry Ford keeps his 20,200 acres near Savannah hard at work growing cotton, rice and experimental rubber plants for his friend Thomas Edison. The U. S. Department of Agriculture is cooperating to try and develop the sappy seedlings of a U. S. raw rubber industry.

P: At Miami Beach is the estate of Tire-man Harvey Samuel Firestone, third member of a famed triumvirate. Mr. Firestone went to his estate last week, soon to be visited by the Messrs. Ford and Edison. Surveying Miami's posthurricane repairs and development, he said, with all the pride of a native, "The city looks splendid!"

The southeast's idea of itself is increasingly industrial and commercial. Especially is this true of the Carolinas. where all is tobacco, peanuts and power. To Wiinston-Salem on the north, Durham on the east and the Piedmont ("Where Wealth Awaits You") Section on the south, the Duke Power Co. furnishes 849,905 h.p. to light lights and turn wheels. Duke is building additional plants on the Catawba River near Charlotte to furnish 600,000 h.p. more.

Between Columbia and Lexington on the Saluda River a lake to impound 100 billion cubic feet of water and generate 261,000 h.p. is abuilding by the new Lexington Power Co., subsidiary of General Gas & Electric Corp. of N. Y.

Across the Great Smoky Mountains lies Chattanooga, "Dynamo of Dixie," below and beyond which (an inch off the map) is Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River in Alabama, where stand the 612,000 h.p. Federal power plants.

Florida still makes the most cigars, North Carolina the most cigarettes, snuff, pipe and chewing tobacco. North Carolina raises more raw tobacco than any State. (Virginia is the second-ranking State for raw tobacco and all products thereof.)

Georgia raises the most peanuts; North Carolina second.

Alabama raises the most Southeastern cotton; Georgia second.

Most famed for its citrus fruits, Florida has other great growths. It ranks with the Carolinas as a lumber State, not far behind piney Georgia, whose output is more than a billion board-feet per annum. And, though few people know it, huge herds of beef cattle range the plains of Florida's northern interior. Many a Texas steer, like many a tired tycoon, goes to Florida to get fat.