Jackson, Kentucky - History (part 3 of 3)

Popular Misconceptions

It is not strange that Chicago Editors have mistaken notions about our people and our geography when they are so common at home. It is less than one hundred miles by rail - and two trains daily - from Lexington, the county seat of Fayette county to Jackson, the county seat of Breathitt county, and at one time Breathitt county was a part of one of the richest counties in the rich Blue Grass zone ; and yet we find an attorney for this same railroad in an address referring to "Darkest Breathitt county," which he had never visited ; nor did he know that this railroad had been running into Jackson for a quarter of a century - the feud being of a later date by a decade ; nor did he know that Mrs. Lees of New York and Mrs. McCormick of Chicago had endowed a college there ante-dating the "family troubles" from whilc'h the entire outsi.de world is free and wiliich trouble, it is believed, is ended forever. Is it any wonder that a Chicago Editor in writing about Lincoln says, "He was a mountain rail-splitter from the feudal districts," when Lincoln was born west of Lexington way down in Hardin county - we used to say Hardin - as the cabin in which Abe was said to have been born was "on the line" between Hardin and Larue counties, but the farm "deadened over" in Larue and now everybody says Larue as the Lincoln Memorial was erected at Hodgenville - and the "Lincoln Way" takes one there. It would be hard to tell now just where the Lincoln Cabin stood, for many years ago an enterprising "showman" removed it and was on a tour of the East exhibiting it wQien Editor Collier,

Humorist Forerunner

Thomas Hood, great English wit and humorist and poet, once wrote an essay on "Better Late Than Never," and he illustrated his humor with rude wood cuts. In this essay we have a lot of senile and bald "codgers" learning to spell at 70 years. The youthful teacher has one of the wavy beard scholars sitting on a three-legged stool with a dunce's cap on his head and another way-back number standing up for not knowing his lesson This "skit" of Hood's doubtless gave Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart of Rowan county a practical idea on education, for over in Rowan county moonhine stills have given way - practically - to "moonshine schools" for all ag'_s, and illiteracy is wiped out ; everybody can read and write except of course, the idiots and incapables.

Bravo ! Kentucky woman ; Bravo ! Shade of Thos. Hood ! An essay to raise a laugh - and a laugh for enlightening the world. Now after illiteracy is wiped out in Kentucky mountains let Mrs. Mountain School Teacher go "Mothering" down to Boston.

Wasn't it Jules Verne who gave Langley the idea of the aeroplane, which the Wright Bros, perfected ? And yet there are otherwise sensible persons who boast that they never read poetry or fiction.

Think of ''The Old Benchers" of Elia (Charles Lamb). They could read and enjoy the shady side of life. How many poor old creatures can only sit and smoke and chew and siviff and grumble because they can't read.

The Darius Greens Were The Pioneers In Aviation

The discovery of one drop of gasoline, with the Edison spark attached meant the gasoline engine, the motor cycle to annihilate distance, the automobile, the weighter than air - Vedrone astride his "snake doctor" going two miles a minute - Education. We have it but we still have stumbling blocks - orthodoxy in common schools - fanatic cranks, gargoyle priests of hide-bound Protestantism who put stumbling blocks ahead of children - Catholic children ; Jewish children ; Jeffersonian children - excluding them from ':he common school by teachers of the Methodist bias teaching that rank form of superstition. Give us complete separation of church and state and see what real - not sham - education will do for The Young American who knows no race, no creed in his great Amalgamation. The Mountains of Easte.-n Kentucky need no outside help for education - instead they are sending _ money to "enlighten" the "Person Who Sits in Darkness(?)" so-called, and hence mountain counties build $30,000 common schools like Breathitt county, Perry county and Leticher county resent clerical beggers with itching palms passing the hat to educate "Three millions of poor, ignorant mountianeers." Absurd statistics; a fraud, for all th e "nonsectarian schools" built that way are now Presbyterian-controlled, or Methodist-controlled, or Baptist-controlled, or Catholic-controlled, etc.

Teachers - false teachers who, however happily, do not get it to "take" - as we say of vatcination - for the great asset. Common sense and Reason is possessed by all Highlanders of Virginia and North Carolina ancestry; false teachers who know not too often how to teach the eighth grade, teaching school children the Edenic parable and the Flood myth and the Christ fiction as literal facts together with crude gospel songs - sung however, often to inspiring music ; but no "America," no "Star Spangled Banner" ; Presbyterian creed - rewards of one dollar for "scholars" to memorize it together with its "picture" of the God idea, which is a perfect picture of Nothing ; without form and void ; without body or parts ; neglecting history of our political science or good government.

Bravo to Mrs. Wilson who. refuses tta be tempted to abandon her noble work of abolishing illiteracy in Kentucky till her mission is ended. Although the band of Fame burns on her noble brow, she - like Charlotte of Werter - goes on - goes on - common sense woman that she is - "cutting bread and butter."

Tackson Neroized

I see the new Jackson City, in my mind's eye, rising, with Plaza on Broadway to new Federal Building, to replace burnt district ; skyscrapers to rise on site of fire-traps and deathtraps ; fine churches to replace the little, cramped ones burned, because the fire, said one, reminded him of the burning of Rome by Nero - no water ; but plenty of whisky ; and even the company of soldiers was "unable" to assist - all save three privates. When it was seen that the shack part of Jackson was doomed, it was turned into an orgie, and the two churches which a halfdozen sober fire-fighters, with buckets, could have saved, went up from sheer neglect. There were some brave and intrepid men, however, who worked manfully, and one of them. South Strong, came near losing his life ; was badly injured in attempting to check the fire by blowing up a building with powder and dynamite.

Hunting And Fishing

At certain times up here fishing is fine and it would be better if the Fish Warden could apprehend all of the violators, with traps and nets and barbarous dynamite, so destructive to small fish and eggs.

These forests of timber are literally alive with squirrels, and rabbits are thick and increase almost as rapidly as Belgians, who produce young every six weeks.

The early hunters have no trouble in bagging quail - partridges a-plenty all the way over both railroad lines east of Winchester and Richmond.

Mountain Illumination

MOUNTAIN ILLUMINATION. Within a year McRoberts and Jenkins will be the coke ovens of the world - and their fires will illuminate the heavens for miles and miles - Jenkins, "the over night town" between Cincinnati and Louisville and Washington.

Phone 41 Literary Lights

I hear of another budding mountain author a candidate for fame besides the Author Mutzenberg, who writes of feuds, tragedies and crimes - Josiah H. Combs, who is now practicing law in Louisville, but like Author Haney I have been unable to find any trace of his "works."

I know a woman writer whom I predict is going to take high rank in mountain authorship according to my poor judgment. She gives evidences of talent of a high order. Her descriptive powers surpass Fox and her ideals are lofty - Mrs. Wells, of Highland College, on Puncheon Creek.

I had the pleasure of reading one of her essays two years ago published by the now defunct Soul Winners' Society. Her husband is the Principal and her sister, Mrs. Flower, is the art and music teacher. They are none of them "manor born," but loyal by adoption.

I hear of a Jackson attorney who once wrote a booklet, but I never saw a copy of it, nor have I been able to get hold of the theme of the treatise ; but I hear that it did not pertain to the mountains nor to Kentucky, so I lost interest in it and gave up my quest. The author is Colonel A. H. Patton, well known to readers of the Kentucky press on account of his defense of men charged with the "removal" of ex-Sheriff Ed Callahan, and his remarkable success as a criminal lawyer for the defense always. His success before juries has" for the nonce, it seems, eclipsed his literary ambition.

Lees Collegiate Institute

Lees Collegiate Institute was founded by Rev. J. J. Dickey, now of Hutchison, Ky., in 1884, as Jackson Academy, and was chartered by the Legislature of Kentucky with powers that allowed an indefinite expansion of the curriculum and influence. Financial losses caused the company which had been formed to conduct the institution to sell their holdings, at which time Dr. L. H. Blanton, who was then Chancellor of Central University, not as an investment, but for the benefit of the youth of Breathitt County and the surrounding territory. It was conducted with a marked degree of success for more than ten years as an adjunct to the University, large sums having been given every year by Mrs. Cyrus H. McCormick, of Chicago, 111., and' Mrs. Susan P. Lees, of New York- In 1897 Mrs. Lees placed the school on a -firm foundation for the balance of her life by large donations, and the name was changed to The S. P. Lees Collegiate Institute. There was never a deficit as long as Mrs. Lees lived, and on her death she bequeathed the institu-

- tion $15,000 as an endowment fund, some of which was used necessarily to pay inheritance tax ; and other expenses left the fund about $12,000 when the school was turned over to the present management. Mrs. McCormick had already built the south wing of the present commodious building and finished the class rooms and placed in the basement a fine manual training plant, which was used so long as Mrs. McCormick supplied the means to pay the heavy expense of such a plant. An effort is making now to reopen this department and give an opportunity of training the hand as well as the head.

When the two Presbyterian Colleges of Kentucky were consolidated in 1001, the agreement specified that the Institute should be transferred to the Synod of the Southern Presbyterian Church in Kentucky as soon as the times were propitious for such a change. This time came in October, iyo6, when Lees Collegiate Institute was chartered as an independent corporation, the incorporators pledging themselves not to conduct the school for any private pecuniary gain, but as a secondary school of high class for the education of boys and girls. The trustees were to be elected by the Synod, which has been clone in every case, and the church to take an oversight of the work as a whole. Central University gave the new corporation a deed to the grounds and equipment of every kind, and it is now conducted as a church institution, to be sure, but for the benefit of all who will take advantage of the opportunity to advance- The school is compelled to charge tuition fees, but they cover only about two-thirds of the actual expense of instruction. A sufficient endowment fund is greatly needed to enlarge the plant and give additional tuition to worthy pupils who are unable to go away to school.

The long list of those who have been educated in one degree or another in the Institute bears witness to the good and lasting work that has been done and is still being done by those who have put in their money without hope of any financial return whatever.

McCormick Chapel in South Jackson also belongs to the corporation of Lees Collegiate Institute, being first used for school purposes for the children of the mining population in South Jackson, but now used for evangelistic and Sunday school purposes. It has in its time been of great benefit to the people of that quarter of town, it being a settled rule of the management that only men with actual authority to preach shall use the building, thus providing for the people a reliable worship.

Proposed Monstrous Legislation

The Monster Greed is beginning to show his bloody teeth in Eastern Kentucky the colossal coal combinations, and it means mischief. The Slemps, and the Camdens and their allies, not satisfied with monopolies and Pluck 'Em Commissaries - Thou Shalt Not Steal - have proposed a bill in Congress - which amounts to robbery by statute ; scientific thievery. Not satisfied with gobbling up everything in coal and oil and gas in Virginia and West Virginia they would now like to "grab" the eighteen thousand square miles of bituminous coal fields in Eastern Kentucky, by a measure which will compel individual owners to sell their lands, and at Trust prices whether they desire to do so or not.

There is going to be trouble up there as it is, and when it comes the strikes in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and Colorado will be tame in comparison, for these Kentuckians are noted for markesmanship and they are not afraid to hit the mark. Kentucky, so far, has escaped emeutes, riots, strike fights, violence, bloodshed and civil strife - but it is sure to come in Eastern Kentucky, as sure as organization comes, and with it the Right to Strike.

It would take a regiment of Regulars to dislodge a company of Kentucky miners in their mountain fastnesses and natural fortifications. They ar e not yet organized, but they soon will be. The Appeal to Reason and the Menace are going there by the hundreds and soon they will see the extortion as practiced on them in exhorbitant prices to keep them enslaved. Kentucky legislators should pass laws forbidding coal combinations from dealing in merchandise or issuing scrip for money, as is provided, and wisely, in the Constitutions of Oklahoma and Arizona and New Mexico where there is free competition ; the miners often engaging in merchandising, allaying this source of discontent. Short-sighted monoolists ought to see this.

Slemp is a Republican Congressman. They would corral all the valuable gifts of nature to all the children of men in esse and in posse to exploit the owners to their selfish ends ; to Greed.

I hear through John R. Williamson of Lexington that publishers of magazines and newspapers have been subsidized with "watered stocks" to catch the "suckers" all over the country.

Let. them put their millions in there. There is a limit. Som day (didn't the Congressional Committee recommend that the only way to end the trouble in Pennsylvania and West Virginia would be for the Government to "take over" all coal lands and work them for the benefit of all the people?) these fellows will find their ill-gotten gains confiscated just as the Terrazas family and the other Mexican land grabbers found themselves - across the border in El Paso, Texas, glad that their necks are secure - the enslaved peons now with the Master Hand a-top.

It had to "cough-up" - but not till 270,000 heads had been severed from 270,000 bodies rendering France nearly acephalous. It was an awful spectacle but it secured liberty and justice and equity to France for all time.

There is on the map of the Consolidation Coal Company a spot marked "Not for Sale." None of their vast possessions are for sale. This spot thev failed to "gobble" from individual owners and some dav it will be a thorn in the side of the Great Rhinoceros.

Representative Caleb Powers, of Kentucky, .whose distrist embraces enormous coal fields, made the charge that the pending antitrust legislation, which has the Administration's backing, would open the doors to the formation of a coal monopoly in the United States such as the world has never seen. Powers issued a statement in which he says : "We have in Southeastern Kentucky over 10,000 square miles of bituminous coal territory. The Western coal field of Kentucky has over 6,000 square miles, making over 16,000 square miles of bituminous coal. There are only 14,000 square miles in the entire state of Pennsylvania. So it can be readily seen that the state of Kentucky is vitally concerned in Section 3 of the pending- bill. Under its provisions I see nothing to prevent any of the great moneyed interests of this country from buying up. under compulsion, the entire coal output of Southeastern Kentucky or of any other section of this great section. The significance of this legislation is perfectly amazing. It is proposed by this bill to give the great moneyed interests of this country the questioned right and authority to buy up, without any power on the part of the owner to refuse, the entire coal output of the country.

Now there may be a better way for Americans out of it than by "taking over'' by confiscation, by Revolution such as was necessary in Chihauhau, Mexico.

These thousands of acres of newly discovered lands ought to be pre-empted by the Govenrment and held or at least operated by Federal authority for all the people.

See what the "aliens'' have already "grabbed," not counting what is under option : 250,000 acres in Letcher County and the railroad only got to McRoberts, the terminus January, 19 1 3, and over 100,000 acres under option. Of course the poor mountain dwellers have had their eyes cheated out of their heads by these Virginia and Pennsylvania coal sharks. They lived for years and years by cutting clown a forest tree and floating it down the river to market.

The richest and best coal field in the United States bartered for a song. Seven foot veins of coal. Ten million tons of coal can be mined a year for 100 years, before the Consolidation exhausts its supply on 100,000 acres in a single county in South Eastern Kentucky! In Letcher county at Jenkins and McRoberts.

The lands of the Elkhorn Coal Co., which is not an operating company, but a speculative one, are valued at $30,000,- 000 in stock, preferred and common, and first mortgage fivevear convertible notes, $19,000 common!

C. N. Manning of Lexington, in a pamphlet gives the technical side of these coal, oil and gas lands and shows that some such lands in Pennsylvania have sold as high as $1,000 per acre.

Without a protest of a single press editor this, the most gigantic swindle of the age, was perpetrated in the name of Progress and Development; but rather were these Editors aiders and abetters, many of them with itching palms doubtless having been "scratched" with "watered stocks" corroborating John R. Williamson's statement to me.

Colonel W. D. Pickett, of Campsie street, Lexington, says Kentucky ought to control the vast natural wealth ; Kentucky Captial had a deadening case of somniculosis and lost its opportunity ; it was sleepy sick.

Perhaps, after all, it was a good thing that the capitalists of Kentucky had "sleepy sickness," and didn't invest in the stock of these West Virginians - for they might never have seen dividends therefrom.

The people of this Republic, at no far distant day, in the future, are going to prosper by the example of these tremendous combinations. The Federal Government will own or control them ; will "take them over" or "reclaim"' them, and conduct them for the use and benefit of all the people for all time.

There will be penalties in fines to get back the millions of dollars wrongfully wrong from the public, by criminal tribute levied by the malefactors of wealth.

Thus in the end Standard Oil, and all such systematized organizations which have done what competition could never have done ; serve a good purpose. Thus the reasoning of the Appeal to Reason and Elbert Hubbard is justified in their logic, that Monopolies, thus conducted, are good things; to teach the Government how to do it.

Mr. Desha Breckinridge, Editor of the Lexington Herald, thus sounds a note of warning to those Wallingfords, who would get-rich-quick by investing in coal companies:

"One of the most frequent comments we hear in any discussion of Eastern Kentucky is an expression by those whose attention has been recently directed to that region that thev did not make investments there a number of years ago, and inquiries as to the possibilities of investment now.

* * * * An enormous amount of money has been lost through investments in coal lands, or in lands supposed to be coal lands, in Eastern Kentucky.

Thousands of dollars have been spent for the purchase of lands in Eastern Kentucky that ar e still inaccessible and cannot, therefore, be developed until other railroads are built.

No man can buy land at haphazard with any certainty that from that purchase profit will be made, nor should any man invest in coal lands, or in the securities of coal companies, with the expectation of quickly securing fabulous profits

* * * * While there are still as many opportunities for profitable investments as there were five years ago, there are also equally as many opportunities for bad investments, and there are no opportunities "to get rich quick" through investments either in lands or in securities of coal companies."

Government ownership, or control, would put a clamper on the terrorizing waste by capitalistic greed of our natural resources. Our natural wealth is ruthlessly wasted to satisfy insatiable and criminal greed. Timber is burned and none

There is yet time for the land owners of Kentucky coal fields to check the fellows who want to buy your valuable lands or tie them up on options at Jew John prices.

Freeze to your lands. You can live. Timber soars higher and higher. You who are so short-sighted as to sell out, will have to get out. Where can you go to better your condition? When the law is passed to force you to sell whether or no, make it "hot" for the fellows who come to get your signature and that fo your wife!

Lexington, Kentucky

Table of Contents - Colleges, The Horse, Whiskey, Shetland Ponies, Lexington Brewery, the Tobacco "Worm," Sports, The Goddess of Chance. Hotels, Churches, Hemp Industry, City Ja (The VVhited Sepulchre) ; Ashland, Monuments, Knights of Pythias Home and Farm, Fraternal Orders, Y. M. I., Columbian Knights, Hospital for the Insane, House of Mercy, Red Light District. Women's Clubs, Theatres, Parks, Libraries, Bakeries. Wholesale Merchants, Allied Printing Trades, Newspapers, Tobacco Warehouses and Redrying plants. Saloons, Restaurants, Professional, Cooper Shops, Residences, Tragedies. N'egroes, Literature and Art, Graft and Greed, Crime. Tuberculosis, Sherley Crest, Tax-paying Asses, "Skv-Scrapers," Engineers Gunn and Pickett, Audubon society. Trees, forest, fruit and ornamental ; Court Day, Police Court (antiquated 1 ) run for profit, the "Camorrah, chute, for whites and negroes, males and females: Organized labor, Florists, Horticulturists, Prof. Angus Neal Gordon, Garages, Railroads, Tractions, Street Railway (no "Jim Crow"); Ice Plants, Artificial Stone Iiallast Mills. Characters, Auctioneers, Custom House and Post Office, Electric Light and Power, Market House, Cemeteries, Bankers, Irish Town,

Goodloe Town, Yellman Town, Schoonmaker Bros., Harry and Edwin : Flouring Mills, Marble Works, John Doe and Richard Roe, Official Crooks ; A. A. Bablitz, Mrs. Frances Beauchamp, Blue Grass Park, Bryan Station, Dog Fennel Precinct. Aylesford, Butchers, Coppini, Hart, Clay, Breckinridges, Music. Inventions, Bob Cassidy, The Moth and the Flame. Vanity Fair, Burgoo, County Fair, Hunting and Fishing, Industrial School, School for Scandal, The Jack Pot. "Satan Exalted Sat," A Church Maze Dance, Fatalism Exploded, Dewhurst's Monoplane, Cafes, Dogs, The Blue Grass Region. Charles Chilton Moore, Jere Delph, The Genushelkat. Water Street, Foreigners, Howard King, G. W. Bernev, W. G. Morgan, W. II. Harrison, the Bi gFour Passenger Agents : Lewis H. Ramsey, Adolph Greebcl, Rogers Clay, Fire Department.

Never before in my long career as a publisher and editor of newspapers or magazines or books did I ever take a saloon advertisement or a distillery advertisement or a brewery advertisement.

and malt liquors ; always voted against licenses of saloons, always spoke against th e curse ; but I have, in my last two books, been unwittingly advertising saloons in taking the advertisments of the LeLand Hotel and the Phoenix Hotel; so this time I let the bars down to Restaurants and Cafes which make the saloon the prominent feature like the Royal and the Berlin and the Criterion, etc., or D. J. Hickey's ample saloon, but big dining rooms and other rooms for lodgers, and hence this time, to emphasize the new departure, I took saloon advertisements and barrel houses which can't sell less than a quart, and if you will read these advertisements you will see that the new law gives them the right to ship their "goods" into 'dry" territory for "personal use ;" and hence with wholesalers prepared to ship bottled in bond whiskies and beers there is "no excuse for the American Saloon" and its Wine Rooms which contribute to the delinquency of young girls; no excuse for licensing saloons with gambling annexes.

What excuse have I for taking saloon advertisements at this stage of the game? None whatsever save that I need the money and for the pleasure of a new thrill in the battle of life. I want to get the best of these whiskey "devils" once - the money a sort of "rebate" as it were, for hasn't Old John Barleycorn always levied tribute on me and my plethoric purse? I have always been on the wrong side of the ledger and the wrong side of the counter, and so I may yet reform and make a model saloonist of myself. Who knows? Stranger things have happened in my eventful life.

Pilcher To Revive His Lexington Democrat

It is my purpose to revive my Lexington Democrat which was volume n, No. 3, as a Sunday, paper, when the Morning Democrat was organized. The same political conditions exist now : Lexington has no Democratic newspaper. The Herald has been Independent when it was not Republican. It will bolt our present Congressman Campbell, Cantrill, should

A Catch-All

I fear this publication is getting to b e an omnium gatherum as it has announced my programmes generally, there being only two secrets not yet revealed.

Some of my pious friends like Doctor Henry Clay Morrison of Wilmore, Ky., "Come-outer," "Nazarene" bunch of sanctificationisters. will doubtless, think this a helva book.

Elder Blank of Louisville meeting Elder Powell said: "I've just finished that thar extr'o'd'nary book you lent me and it's the er, the er- - "

I'm not afraid that any of the hale, hearty, healthy, hopeful, happy tribe of Eastern Kentucky will be shocked to death or call for "extreme unction" whatever that is, as a result of this publication which I do not copyright nor enter in the United States Mail, for fear of indictment - that drag-net "misuse" of which offense the Saturday Evening Post, and George Ade are guilty every week - blasphemy.

I know what blasphemy is, and I do not know of but one man who achieved the enviable distinction of committing it - in a literary way and that fresh corpse was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known to the world as "Mark Twain'' and he never published his blasphemy, par excellence, it being found by his fool biographer. I think it was a piece of literary experiment, he being a poseur, and never meant to be published. Xo sentence by Schopenhauer is comparable with it for gall and pessimism. He wrote : "There was never a child born into this world whose begetting was not a crime."

If I "treated" the feuds and the origin of feuds - I didn't attend to give this profound secret away - the wagging tongues of scandal - 1 might "go back," but if I Peter Grimmcd it, or Rip Van Winkled it, I would "Come back" feetsies foremost.

The Opening Of An Empire

[Editorial by Editor Desha Breckinridge in the Lexington Morning Herald, Wednesday, May 20, 1914, in which is masterly told the story in a nutshell which I have futilely attempted to depict in over an hundred pages.]

We have just returned from a trip which we wish every citizen of Kentucky could and would take. From the standpoint of information, of interest and of pleasure, it is one of the most delightful trips that a Kentuckian can possibly take.

Three years ago the Lexington & Eastern Railroad stopped at Jackson, Breathitt County; the Big Sandy division of the Chesapeake & Ohio extended only to Elk Horn City ; between the terminus of the Lexington & Eastern and the terminus of the Big Sandy division of the C. & O., a distance of one hundred and forty miles, was a railroad desert. The illimitable supiply of coal underlying the mountains, on which stand apparently inexhaustible forests of hard wood timber, was utterly inaccessible. But little different from the condition in which Boone, Crockett and their companions found that country, when they blazed the way from Virginia to the Dark and Bloody Ground, was this empire, underlaid with coal sufficient to supply the world, crowned with forests surpassing any in the State.

Not within a hundred years had there been any increase in the population. The more virile, vigorous, intelligent of the men had scaled the mountains and gone out through the passes to the lowlands, in many eases winning high success and achieving wide reputation, but leaving upon others the burden of existence in the mountain fastness from which they escaped.

He would have been a rash prophet who three years ago would have attempted to draw a picture of the change in these mountains within so short a time. The Lexington & Eastern has been extended from .Tackson one hundred miles; its terminus is now McRoberts, a town built within the past three years. Through Shelby Gap, up the Elkhorn thirty-five miles, a railroad has been built to Jenkins, where there are over seven thousand people, and from which is daily shipped thousands of tons of coal.

McRoberts, the terminus of the Lexington & Eastern on the west, and Jenkins, the terminus of the Baltimore & Ohio on the east, are but five miles apart. Instead of an untraveled wilderness between these railroads there is now a macadam roadway across the mountain, over which motor cars make hourly trips. New towns have sprang up as in a night, the very names of which are unknown to many of us of Central Kentucky, so much more rapid has been their growth than has been our groping intelligence.

Wayland, Jenkins, McRoberts, Fleming, Hemphill, Garrett - who of the readers of The Herald know of these towns that have sprung up as if by magic in these mountain counties? Who realize that there have come into these mountains an immigration in numbers greater than all the residents of Fayette County? Who appreciate that from the veins of coal that three years ago were as inaccessible as the coal beds of Alaska there are now being shipped millions of tons a year? How many of the people of Central Kentucky have even the dimmest, conception of the wealth that has been poured with lavish hands, guided, however, by wise judgment, into these mountains to secure the coal that is now admitted to be the best coal produced in America?

Not hundreds of thousands, not millions only, but tens of millions of dollars have been spent by the railroads to secure the tonnage, and other millions by the coal companies to furnish the tonnage which the railroads sought so earnestly. Up streams that it seemed almost impossible that even a mule could go, through mountains over which a goat only could climb the railroads have penetrated the mountain fastness and are today carrying out train load after train load of coal that is unequalled.

It is difficult to write in moderate terms of what has been, what is being and what is going to be done in that region. All the world yields admiration to the Government of - the United States for the completion of the Panama Canal. Promptly, efficiently, honestly, the representatives of the Government, with unlimited wealth at their command, completed the task in the completion of which the French nation failed ingloriously| Greater than the accomplishment in dig- ging the ditch to join the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific is the accomplishment of the work done in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. And yet it was done without the blare of trumpets, without the acclaim even of the people of the State that will benefit most by its accomplishment t ******

As far as we know it is the only great industrial undertaking that has been inaugurated and accomplished since the panic of 1907. It marks, as far as we are aware, the only material extension of railroad lines, and the only great development of natural resources, accomplished in the ipast seven years. It is impossible to convey an adequate conception of what has been accomplished to one who has not sf."Ii with his own eyes the work that has been and LOtfld the work that is being done. From the smaljest to the most important detail equal attention seems u> have i"en given. Nothing has been overlooked, nor has expense been spared to provide for the most economical mining of the coal. Nothing has been overlooked, nor has exipense been spared to provide for the health, the comfort and the pleasure of those who mine the coal.

A model bakery, a model abattoir, an unfailing supply of pure potable water, provisions for recreation, schools as good as any in the State, a hospital the equal of any, Young Men's Christian Associations with every provision for the wholesome entertainment not only of the men but of the women, are some of the features of the development, the purpose of which is to secure and retain the most efficient and reliable miners.

Wonderful as has been the development of the past three years, the development has in fact but begun, the mere surface is but scratched. We hope the people of Lexington, of Central Kentucky, of Louisville, will quickly become familiar with that section. Eastern capital has done what has been done; Kentucky capital has as yet participated but little in this development that in largest measure was due to the imagination, the foresight, the honest intent, the genius of a mountain man - John Mayo, who long years ago foresaw with the prescience of a prophet the development of his highlands, and worked for that development with the constant and never failing enthusiasm of the practical man of affairs.

He lived to see a firm foundation laid for the ultimate development his genius foresaw. But it is only the foundation that has been laid; the fu-

All of that territory this side of the mountain which separates the termini of the Lexington & Eastern and the Baltimore & Ohio, by reason of natural lines of of trade is tributary to Lexington. There should be closer terms between the people of the Blue Grass and the people of the mountains; such terms will come with greater familiarity between these sections. With better train service, with greater facilities to take care of the trade of the mountains, there should come such cordial relations between the mountains and the Blue Grass that Central Kentucky will help furnish the capital to develop the mountains, and in return the mountains will pour into the Blue Grass an unceasing and constantly increasing stream of wealth.

In an article published after a visit to Jenkins and McRoberts last year, we told of the building of those towns, and the development of the property of the Consolidation Coal Company. We should like now to tell something of the development of the lands of the Elk Horn Fuel Company, under lease to the Elk Horn Mining Corporation, and yet we feel unable so to do. It is beyond our power of description to picture what was a few years since, what is now, and what will be within the next few years.

There is certainly no coal in America, probably none in the world, equal to the Elk Horn coal. The secretary of one of the largest gas companies in Europe after a thorough trial of the Elk Horn coal wrote: "I am sending below figures indicating its qualities for gas manufacture, and I am informed by our chief engineer that it is in all respects a highly excellent coal, superior to any that we have ever obtained from other sources of supply."' Last year after a thorough test one of the largest users of coking coal in America gave an order for a million tons of this new coal.

The Elk Horn Fuel Company owns 2G5,535 acres and has under option 50,000 acres additional, making a total of 315,535 acres. Of this principality there is at present developed but a fraction. The Elk Horn Mining Corporation has 'a lease on twenty-five thousand acres owned by the Elk Horn Fuel Company, twenty thousand acres of which are in Floyd and

Knott counties on the waters of 'the North and West Forks of Beaver Creek, and four thousand five hundred acres in Letcher County on the waters of Boone Fork of the Kentucky River.

The development on Beaver Creek in Floyd and Knott counties is larger than the development in Letcher County, and from it the Elk Horn Company expects to ship twice as much coal over the Chesapeake & Ohio as it will ship from Letcher County over the Lexington & Eastern and the Louisville & Nashville. But as the development in Letcher County is within easy access of Lexington it is of more immediate interest to Central Kentucky.

The town of Fleming is the center of the production of the Elk Horn Mining Corporation in Letcher County There are located there some five hundred houses, all erected within the last year. At Fleming are located two of the six mines which the Elk Horn Company has opened In Letcher; two others are located at Hemphill and two at Hayman, all within a few miles of each other. From these mines, the development of which began less than a year ago, there are already being shipped some hundreds of tons a day; within a year the company will be shipping thousands of tons a day, it being the expectation and intention of the officers of the company to ship a million of tons a 'year from the mines in Letcher and some two millions of tons from the mines in Floyd and Knott counties.

Some faint idea, but only a faint idea, of what this development will mean can be obtained by those who now visit that region. From Fleming on down to Jackison the Lexington & Eastern is building spurs, extending its tracks, and providing the facilities to care for an annual output of many times the present output from the mines now opened. It is a con- * servative estimate that within five years five millions of tons of coal will be shipped from the mines this side of the divide between the waters of the Kentucky and the Big Sandy, and ten millions of tons a year from the other side of that, divide.

where there are other developments; creeks on which today there are no developments, and along which there are few habitations, will within that five years become as populous as that section of which Fleming is the center. And we of Central Kentucky should endeavor to become so acquainted with that section that we may be of service to it and it to us, for only through mutual service can there come mutual benefit.