Studies in the South and West, with Comments on CanadaWarner, Charles Dudley
History
Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada
Warner, Charles Dudley
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Kentucky has gone to work in a very sensible way to induce immigration
and to attract settlers of the right sort. The Bureau of Immigration
was established in 1880. It began to publish facts about the State, in
regard to the geologic formation, the soils, the price of lands, both
the uncleared and the lands injured by slovenly culture, the kind and
amount of products that might be expected by thrifty farming, and the
climate; not exaggerated general proclamations promising sudden wealth
with little labor, but facts such as would attract the attention of men
willing to work in order to obtain for themselves and their children
comfortable homes and modest independence. Invitations were made for
a thorough examination of lands—of the different sorts of soils in
different counties—before purchase and settlement. The leading idea was
to induce industrious farmers who were poor, or had not money enough
to purchase high-priced improved lands, to settle upon lands that the
majority of Kentuckians considered scarcely worth cultivating, and the
belief was that good farming would show that these neglected lands were
capable of becoming very productive. Eight years’ experience has fully
justified all these expectations. Colonies of Swiss, Germans, Austrians,
have come, and Swedes also, and these have attracted many from the
North and North-west. In this period I suppose as many as ten thousand
immigrants of this class, thrifty cultivators of the soil, have come
into the State, many of whom are scattered about the State, unconnected
with the so-called colonies. These colonies are not organized
communities in any way separated from the general inhabitants of the
State. They have merely settled together for companionship and social
reasons, where a sufficiently large tract of cheap land was found
to accommodate them. Each family owns its own farm, and is perfectly
independent. An indiscriminate immigration has not been desired
or encouraged, but the better class of laboring agriculturists,
grape-growers, and stock-raisers. There are several settlements of
these, chiefly Swiss, dairy-farmers, cheese-makers, and vine-growers, in
Laurel County; others in Lincoln County, composed of Swiss, Germans, and
Austrians; a mixed colony in Rock Castle County; a thriving settlement
of Austrians in Boyle County; a temperance colony of Scandinavians in
Edmonson County; another Scandinavian colony in Grayson County; and
scattered settlements of Germans and Scandinavians in Christian County.
These settlements have from one hundred to over a thousand inhabitants
each. The lands in Laurel and Lincoln counties, which I travelled
through, are on a high plateau, with good air and temperate climate, but
with a somewhat thin, loamy, and sandy soil, needing manure, and called
generally in the State poor land—poor certainly compared with the
blue-grass region and other extraordinarily fertile sections. These
farms, which had been more or less run over by Kentucky farming, were
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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