The sandy soil of that part of Florida which is not swamp is fine soil for water melons and vegetables, but unless heavily fertilized is not good for corn or grass. People who wanted to raise cotton, corn, or grass, had to go to other parts of the United States, so for a long time Florida remained almost unsettled. Look in the Appendix and see how many people there are per square mile in Florida. Compare it with Alabama, a cotton state; with Iowa. a corn state; or with Massa chusetts, a factory state.
25. Winter vegetables.— In 1880, when the first railroad, the Atlantic Coast Line, was built from the northern states through to Florida, the express trains made it possible for garden produce to be sent quickly from Florida to the north ern states. People then began to grow lettuce, cabbage, early pota toes, watermelons, cantaloups, tomatoes, and other vegetables, which are shipped north into lands of frost during winter and spring. Thus New York and other northern places have fruits and vegetables for weep and months before their own crops are ready.
A certain truck farmer in Florida planted lettuce in November, and it was ready to send to New York in January. As soon as he sold the lettuce, he transplanted tomato plants from a hotbed to the same ground.
These tomatoes he shipped in March. Then, on the same ground, he planted potatoes, • which he shipped in May. He next grew a big crop of velvet beans, which he fed to the mules that worked on the farm. The rich roots of the beans helped to fertilize the ground for the three crops of vegetables that he planted the following winter. (Sec. 43.) The high freight rate for perishables from Florida to the North makes the vegetable business profitable only when the grower can get high prices. As only a few people can pay these prices, there is often an over supply, and the shipments do not pay expenses. This is one reason why most of Florida is still forested. There is no large market for early vegetables, and profit from' growing them is uncertain. The frost may come and kill the crop, and, at best, the season is short at any one place, for in a week or two after the crop begins to go to market another place farther to the north begins to ship a similar crop. Shipments from south Florida supply the market first, then in turn those from Tampa, from central Florida, and from St. Augustine. These are followed by crops of vegetables from Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; New Bern, North Carolina; and Norfolk, Virginia.
26. Oranges and grapefruit. — Oranges have been growing wild in some of the Florida woods for over three hundred years. The Spaniards, who settled St. Augustine in 1565, brought orange trees with them from Spain. No one grew these oranges to sell far away until 1880, when it was found that Florida oranges sold well, and that money could be made by shipping them to the North. Many orange orchards were then set out. Sometimes in winter the oranges freeze and the trees are hurt, but, nevertheless, orange-growing is now one of the chief indus tries of the state. Thousands of carloads of the golden fruit are sent north each year. It
is a beautiful and interesting sight to see an orange orchard bearing yellow fruit and white blossoms at the same time. Most of the grapefruit used in the United States come from Florida.
27. Tourists.—The warm winter that helps the people grow oranges and vegetables gives Florida another industry—the tourist industry. Many people from the North eastern and North Central states take a vacation in midwinter. They can leave the snowdrifts of Chicago, Detroit, New York, or Boston, and in two days by express train reach Tampa, Miami, or Palm Beach, where they may bathe in the warm ocean water that flows out from the Gulf of Mexico. Great hotels have been bdilt for the thou sands of Northerners who play golf, bathe, fish, race automobiles, and hunt game for a few weeks in winter. Thousands of people also go in automobiles, carrying tents and camping out. All these travelers spend a great deal of money in Florida.
28. of Florida is still a great forest. At times the trains run for miles through unbroken woods. Lumbering is one of the main indus tries, and Florida is a lead ing state in the production of rosin and turpentine, which are called naval stores. These are made from the sap of the pine trees. Ship loads of lumber are sent to our Northern states and to Europe from Tampa, St. Marks, Jacksonville, and Fernandina.
29. Tobacco factories.— Florida has a kind of im ported manufacturing in production of beef, pork, and corn. At the same time she could keep on giving travelers a good time, and raising on a tiny part of her land all the oranges and winter vege tables that northern peo ple would buy. Do you think this stock-raising would increase Florida's trade? Why? dustry. Many Cubans live in Key West and Tampa, making " Havana" cigars from Cuban tobacco.
30. Phosphate rock. — Florida has no mountains, but she has a mining industry; that of digging phosphate rock for making fertilizer. It seems queer, but raw material for fertilizer is dug out of beds of sand which farmers would say were poor soil. How does this happen? Once upon a time the bones and droppings of birds and other animals that lived in this region formed lime phosphate. In this form no plant can use it, so it stays in the ground until we dig it up and treat it with acid in fertilizer factories. It is then called acid phosphate, and is the most common of all commercial fertilizers. All plants must have phosphate, and few soils have as much of it as the plants need. Hundreds of thousands of tons of phosphate rock are carried away each year by the ships that sail from St. Marks and Tampa to our own Atlantic ports and to Europe.
31. Unused resources.—Florida could feed ten, twenty, or thirty times as many people as now live in the state. To do this, it would be necessary to drain the swamps, which would make many thousand acres of good farm land, to fertilize the sandy soil, and to keep live stock, as the people are beginning to do in the Cotton Belt (Sec. 44). In this way, Florida might become a great state for the