“Over on the west coast of Florida in Hillsborough County, or less than two hundred miles north of the southern end of the State, is an old, old town, which, in the territorial days of Florida, when the Government first established a military reservation here, was a small settlement that grew into a village and was called Tampa. Owing to its extreme isolation, its growth was slow, and, in 1884, there were not more than one or two shops, and a population of a little less than seven hundred. A year later the southern terminus of the Plant System of railroads was established at Tampa, and since then the growth of the place has been phenomenal. As Postmaster Cooper, one of Tampa’s wide-awake citizens and a newspaper editor, says: ‘Henry B. Plant may be said to have been the founder of Tampa, and people of enterprise, industry, and capital from every State in the Union, and Cuba, have flocked here and built upon the foundation, until to-day Tampa rivals the best cities in the State. The South Florida Railroad is one of the best equipped railways in the South, extending from Port Tampa to Sanford, a distance of 124 miles.’ “The South Florida Road runs through the most fertile and most prosperous part of the State and has done more than any other agency to develop South Florida. And while it is true that the railroad gave to Tampa her first onward impetus, and has done, and is yet doing, much toward the development of the place, yet there are other agencies which have done much to help along the great work. The most prominent of these is the cigar-making industry, which was first established here three years ago. It is second to none as an important factor in Tampa’s substantial prosperity and commercial success. Tampa has also profited by the immense deposits of phosphate, which is shipped from here, not only by rail all over the country, but by water direct to Europe. There is a large grinding mill here, and a meeting of representatives of phosphate interests was held recently, and a movement started to put up the necessary tanks and machinery for making the acids and other materials for the manufacture of superphosphate. When factories of this sort are put up it will no longer be necessary to send the phosphate to Europe to be acidulated.