They are veritable municipal Jonah's
gourds rising in the night, as it were,
from nothing, into the full rush and
dazzle of metropolitan life. Twenty
years ago Kansas City was a rude fron
tier village: to-day it has 150,000
people and does tens of millions of
dollars of annual business. Fifteen
years ago Birmingham, Ala., was a
mixture of delapidated cotton planta
tion and unbroken forest. It could
have been bought then for a dollar and
a quarter an acre. To-day it is a rush
ing, roaring city, claiming 75,000 in
habitants, and recognized as one of
the great iron manufacturing cities of
the world. Ten years ago Knoxville,
Tenn., was little more than a rough
mountain village, chiefly known as
the former home of old Parson Brown
low. To-day it is a beautiful and
prosperous city of over 40,000 people,
while in the same brief period Chatta
nooga has risen from a railroad cross- j
ing and eating station to a population
of 3o,ooo,and a proud position among
the young manufacturing cities of the
country. Galveston, Charleston, Nash
ville, Memphis, Pensacola and a hun
dred other places show something of
the same astonishing growth, but they
are all somewhat tame compared with
some of the still newer cities that have
seemingly sprung like mushrooms out
of the earth. Not to mention Annis
ton and Bessemer, Alabama, it is i
scarcely five years since the land where j
the pretty and flourishing city of Roa
noke, Va., with its 15,000 people, now
stands, could have been bought for
ten or twenty dollars an acre. To
day it will bring from $100 to $200 a
front foot. Eighteen months ago
land above the village of Johnson City,
in East Tennessee sold for from $20 to
$30 per acre. Recently twenty-five
foot lots of that same land have brought
from $500 to $1,000. Middlesborough,
Ky., is a bustling mining and railroad
town to-day, where the wild forest
was unbroken by a woodman's axe
twelve months ago. But why go on
with this list? There are dozens, scores,
hundreds, of such instances. Right at
the doors of Washington and Balti
more which young cities are being
founded within a few brief moons,
will be as notable examples ot this
wondrous Southern boom as any I
have mencioned. 