Photograph by F. A. RobinsonMiami’s main street at midday showing that there is one automobile to every seven-eighths of an inhabitant.
Photograph by F. A. RobinsonMiami’s main street at midday showing that there is one automobile to every seven-eighths of an inhabitant.
Photograph by F. A. Robinson
Miami’s main street at midday showing that there is one automobile to every seven-eighths of an inhabitant.
A portion of the Tin-Can City at Tampa, with tin-canners engaged in their favorite pursuits.
A portion of the Tin-Can City at Tampa, with tin-canners engaged in their favorite pursuits.
A portion of the Tin-Can City at Tampa, with tin-canners engaged in their favorite pursuits.
representative sport of the tin-canner and the sun-hunter, just as the representative sport of the British working man is drinking Burton’s and just as the representative sport of certain African tribes is wearing rings in their noses.
Just as an Englishman is unable to see anything in baseball, and just as most Americans yawn heartily at the mere mention of cricket, so is the ordinary passer-by unable to detect the charm in horseshoe pitching. He sees a long row of men tossing horseshoes at iron stakes and another long row of men digging the horseshoes out of the dirt and tossing them back at other stakes. But the sun-hunters get out immediately after breakfast and pitch all day with feverish intensity and passionate concentration, only quitting when the sun goes down behind the palms in a golden haze.
Some of the horseshoe experts carry their private horseshoes with them in leather bags, and it is not unusual for anaspiring horseshoe tosser to seek out the experts and pay handsomely for copies of the instruments with which they won to fame and high position. Thus it may be seen how among horseshoe tossers, as well as among golfers, ballplayers and others who should know better, the delusion persists that a workman may attain perfection through his tools instead of through himself.
The more skilful tossers carry with them all the appliances of their avocation—tape measures with which to measure the distance of the shoes from the stake; calipers to measure their distance from one another; chalk with which to keep score; collapsible rakes to smooth out the tumbled dirt around the stakes. The delicate movements of a celebrated tosser as he hitches up his galluses, spits on his right hand and tests his muscles by sinking to a semi-squatting position and rising upright again, are watched with the keenest interest by large crowds ofsun-hunters. When a horseshoe makes a particularly noteworthy flight, a fusillade of applausive spitting splashes on the sun-baked ground.
There is, of course, an International Horseshoe Club. It is too important an organization to be demeaned with a merely local name, such as the Horseshoe Club of America. Then there are local chapters that indulge in tournaments at which feeling runs high. At West Palm Beach, when I was there, a new pitch was being prepared for the big impending tournament with Lake Worth. An international polo match may get more publicity, but there’s more quiet bitterness over a horseshoe tournament—much more. Especially in Florida.
Those who weary of dominoes, checkers, chess and horseshoe pitching are at liberty to cut a bamboo pole and sit in the sun beside one of the countless rivers, streams and inlets that dent the Florida coast. These waters are full of trout, bass, red snapper,yellowtails, pompano, grunts—silvery and delicious fish so-called because of their noisy and peevish growls and grunts of protest when removed from the water—and many other fish whose eating and fighting qualities would have caused Izaak Walton to swoon with delight.
It’s hard to believe that the North, every winter, is full of people who hate northern winters, and of folk who don’t know what to do with themselves. If they don’t know enough to become sun-hunters, they deserve to suffer.
TROPICAL GROWTH
OF THE ENTHUSIASM OF ALL GROWING THINGS IN FLORIDA—OF PAW-PAWS AND PROSPECTUSES AND PERFECT THIRTY-FOURS—OF FIENDS IN HUMAN SHAPE—AND OF THE WATCHFULNESS OF THE NATIVES FOR INSULTS
Everythinggrows in Florida. That is to say, everything grows in Florida that Florida people want to grow. That is Florida’s specialty: growing. Occasionally a few things get out of hand and indulge in some over-enthusiastic growing when Florida people wish that they wouldn’t; but for the most part Florida is proud of the remarkable growths that take place within her boundaries. This is particularly true of southern Florida. The superlatives as well as the fish grow to surprising proportions: so do the real-estate advertisements and the avocados. The sun is larger and warmer than in other parts of America; and thesky—unless the leading Florida authorities are mistaken in their observations—is higher and bluer than elsewhere.
There are only three things that southern Florida has never made any effort to grow. These are mountains, snow-storms and earthquakes. If there were any particular reason for her to grow any of these things, she could probably arrange to pump up a few square miles of ocean floor and pile the sand up into a mountain that would look like a blood relative—say a grandson—of Fujiyama; and she could unquestionably find a way to raise artificial snow-storms that would make Oregon jealous, and earthquakes that would shake out a person’s eye-teeth. Since there isn’t any reason for them, she specializes on more useful things like paw-paws and prospectuses and perfect thirty-four bathing-girls and what-not, and secures some startling results.
Take Miami, for example. Before taking it, one should understand that there is gravedanger in taking any particular city in Florida to the exclusion of any other city, because all the untaken cities immediately feel slighted and begin to thirst for the heart’s blood of the one who did the taking.
Each Florida city or resort is violently jealous of every other resort or city. The residents of Palm Beach speak sneeringly of Miami as being a bit plebeian. The residents of Miami speak compassionately of Palm Beach, as young and pretty girls speak of decaying beauty. St. Petersburg and Tampa and Miami have little of a favorable nature to say concerning one another. They only unite to resist attacks from resorts outside the state, or to say a few tart words about California.
Every little while some fiend in human shape prints a piece in a South Carolina or North Carolina or Georgia paper falsely accusing a Florida city of harboring a few cases of typhoid or scarlet fever, or of being too chilly for winter bathing. Instantly theFlorida people rise to defend the state’s fair name; and the low, searing curses that are hurled against the foul detractor are warm enough to singe a hog.
Every little while, too, Florida gets a chance to slip a knife into her hated resort rival, California; and when the chance occurs, the air is filled with a deadly swishing sound, due to the violence with which the knife is inserted.
A snow-storm in California causes Florida newspapers to spread loud and exultant head-lines entirely across their front pages, declaring excitedly: NO LIVES LOST IN CALIFORNIA BLIZZARD. This is the negation of news everywhere except in Florida; but Florida smacks her lips over it with the keenest delight. She emphasizes the blizzard’s severity by shrieking that no lives were lost, thus implying that hundreds—nay, thousands—might have been lost save for the merest chance. She is so anxious to have tourists realize that she isthe queen of winter resorts that she is overjoyed when another resort-state is cursed with a phase of Nature that tends to discourage tourists.
There is another grave danger in taking any Florida city as an example. The natives of Florida winter resorts are constantly on the qui vive for slights and insults. They are so much on the qui vive in this respect that there is scarcely room for any one else on it. They occupy practically the entire qui vive.
OF HOTEL RATES—OF MOSQUITOES—AND OF THE OUTCRY AGAINST THE SHIPPING BOARD FOR DARING TO MENTION EUROPE
Onecan never tell beforehand what statements, phrases, remarks, words or inflections—or lack of these things—the staunch Floridans will regard as slighting or insulting. Sometimes they become just as fretful if you don’t say them as they do if you do say them.
There is the matter of hotel rates, for example: if you tell what they are at the best hotels, all Florida reviles you for frightening tourists away. If you tell what they are at the cheaper hotels, the owners and officials of the best hotels curse you bitterly for representing Florida as a cheap place. Evidently they want you to lie about the hotel rates; but if you do, they will call you a liar.
Then there is the little matter of mosquitoes. Usually there are not mosquitoes along the Florida coastline between the months of November and March, inclusive, because the prevailing winds drive them inland. Occasionally, however, the wind shifts or the atmosphere is unduly affected by the hemisphere or something technical; and the tough, leathery, muscular, hungry Florida mosquitoes are blown down to the shore, where they sink their dagger-like beaks into the soft white flesh of the northern tourists.
It is only occasionally, it should be understood, that such a catastrophe occurs. Occasionally at Palm Beach one is told with hoarse jeering laughter that there are mosquitoes at Miami; but when one gets to Miami he finds no mosquitoes, and is told with cold emphasis that there aren’t any in Miami—but that there are many of them at Palm Beach. And so it goes. If one doesn’t mention the Palm Beach mosquitoes, oneruns the risk of being viewed with abhorrence by the Miami folk; and if one doesn’t mention the Miami mosquitoes, one is apt to be regarded with loathing by the Palm Beach boosters. And if one goes back North and makes any mention whatever of mosquitoes in Florida, he is more than likely to be enthusiastically damned by every Floridan as a vile prevaricator.
Not long ago the Shipping Board in its advertisements emphasized the delights of winter travel in Europe. Instantly the watchful Floridans leaped to their feet with ear-piercing shrieks of protest. A government bureau, they screamed, was taking the money of Florida taxpayers to advertise winter attractions in competition with their own. The entire state had never been so insulted in its life; and the wrathful cries which went forth traveled all the way to Washington and knocked unsightly chips from many of the capital’s ivory domes. As a result, the Shipping Board promised tochange its policy, and the touchy Floridans became calmer—though it is difficult for the outsider to see how the Shipping Board can advertise at all in the winter without entering into competition with Florida. But you never can tell. You never can tell. It is about as safe to write about Florida as it would be to kick carelessly at the nubbins on a floating mine.
OF PALM TREES—OF VARIETIES OF FISH—AND OF FRUIT AND LIARS AND BARON MUNCHAUSEN
Letus return to the matter of growth in southern Florida. Everything, as has been said, grows there. There are twenty-nine varieties of palm trees; and one can spend an entire week doing nothing but check up palm trees. According to official count there are two hundred and seventy-five different varieties of fish in southern Florida waters—or there were toward the middle of last February. A new variety is discovered every week. Unofficial counters say that there are more than seven hundred varieties. The unofficial ones are probably nearer right than the official ones. There are so many different varieties of fruit that if one attempted to eat every variety in one day, he would unquestionably burst with aloud majority report. A partial list of fruits which are being successfully raised in Florida’s southernmost county, provided by a man with a poor memory, contains avocado—or alligator pear, custard apple, mammea apple, Jamaica apple, rose apple, Bugamot, citron, banana, Barbadoes cherry, chermoyas, cecropia, Surinam cherry, carissa, Jackfruit, lime, lemon, loquat, various sorts of mangoes, fifty-seven different varieties of orange, a number of crosses between oranges and other things, grapefruit, eggfruit, dates, olives, monsterosa deliciosa, papaya, pomegranate, Japanese persimmon, sour sop, sapote, sapodillo, strawberry, tomato. If a Floridan has plenty of time at his disposal, he can think up twenty or thirty more fruits that are fruiting constantly and energetically in southern Florida.
One of the unfortunate features of discussing southern Florida lies in the fact that if one isn’t careful, his non-Florida or anti-Florida hearers will suspect him of havingtaken money to advertise the state. They will, in short, suspect him of exaggeration when he carelessly mentions the ever-sunny skies and the perfect-thirty-four bathing girls and the amazing growths. The whole subject is fraught with risks. Baron Munchausen would never have been able to work up a reputation as a liar in southern Florida, because his lies weren’t much more startling than the things that happen there every day. But if the Baron had sandwiched a few Florida facts among his lies and had tried them out on his neighbors some evening after his second gallon of Dortmunder beer, they would have slapped one another on the back and rolled around in their chairs with tears of mirth pouring down their cheeks, and assured one another between their spasmodic gasps and groans of merriment that there never would be anybody in the world who would be able to tell such downright ridiculous, preposterous, side-splitting, hair-raising lies as the Baron.
OF MIAMI AND OF TROPICAL GROWTH—OF THE GROWING OF A SHINGLE INTO A BUNGALOW—OF THE POPULATION OF MIAMI IN 1980—AND OF THE PRONUNCIATION OF MIAMI
TakeMiami, for example. In 1896 Miami consisted of two small dwellings and a storehouse. Sometimes as many as ten Seminole Indians would be seen in the vicinity of these buildings at one time, and the occupants of the dwellings would scarcely be able to sleep that night because of their excitement at seeing such a throng of people.
In 1910, Miami had a population of 5,471. In 1920 there were about 30,000 people living there. In 1922 there were 40,000. That’s the way things go in Florida. Once let a thing get a foothold, and it grows so rapidly that the general effect is more that of an explosion than a growth.
Grass grows with such enthusiasm in Miami that one can’t merely plant seed and let it grow. If one did that the grass would come in so thick that it would choke itself. What one does is to plant the seed and then, when the seed has sprouted, transplant the spears of grass so that they’re six inches apart.
Tree culture is very simple. A small piece of wood the size of a toothpick is stuck in moist sand. At the end of four years the toothpick has grown into a hibiscus bush twenty feet high and twenty feet across. The publisher of the leading Miami paper declares that in some sections of the city the soil is so fertile that if a shingle is planted in it before sun-up, it will grow into a fully equipped bungalow by nightfall. Other fish stories will be taken up in another place.
Miami surges ahead so rapidly that none of its citizens dares to stand still for a moment in order to watch it grow for fear that
Photograph by F. A. RobinsonScientists skilled in the use of the slide rule have estimated that up to and including April 1, 1922, 1,672,889 kisses have been exchanged beneath this tree.
Photograph by F. A. RobinsonScientists skilled in the use of the slide rule have estimated that up to and including April 1, 1922, 1,672,889 kisses have been exchanged beneath this tree.
Photograph by F. A. Robinson
Scientists skilled in the use of the slide rule have estimated that up to and including April 1, 1922, 1,672,889 kisses have been exchanged beneath this tree.
Photograph by W. A. FishbaughOne of Miami’s many beautiful public schools.
Photograph by W. A. FishbaughOne of Miami’s many beautiful public schools.
Photograph by W. A. Fishbaugh
One of Miami’s many beautiful public schools.
Photograph by W. A. FishbaughPrivate yachts and house-boats tied up at the foot of Miami’s principal shopping street.
Photograph by W. A. FishbaughPrivate yachts and house-boats tied up at the foot of Miami’s principal shopping street.
Photograph by W. A. Fishbaugh
Private yachts and house-boats tied up at the foot of Miami’s principal shopping street.
he’ll be left so far behind that he’ll never catch up. If he makes a prediction, he makes a running prediction; never a standing prediction. If he sells a piece of land—and it’s as natural for a Miami citizen to sell a piece of land as it is for him to have coffee for breakfast—he is very likely to name a price that the land will reach to-morrow instead of the price that it has reached to-day. He is always moving ahead of the city.
The population of Miami has increased four hundred and forty per cent. in the last ten years. Therefore the Miami people figure that it will easily increase another four hundred and forty per cent. in the next ten years. They claim that the city’s population in 1925 will be one hundred thousand, and that in 1930 it will be two hundred thousand. Proceeding at that rate, its population in 1950 will be five million; and by 1980 practically every one in North America will be pushing and crowding in his effort to squeeze into the city.
It is, of course, quite obvious to the effete and blasé northerner that the claims made by the Miami folk show that there are some screws loose on their claimers. The Miami people, however, say that the northern people don’t know how to adjust their views to a rapidly growing city—that they stand still to look at it; and that while they are looking, the city grows out of focus. They prove their theory by the following anecdote:
A short time ago the telephone company sent down estimators to look at Miami and estimate its population in another ten years, in order that the company might be able to install the proper-sized telephone switchboard. The estimators looked, made careful estimates, and reported that the population would be one hundred thousand in ten years’ time. The telephone company burst into loud howls of derision. “You’re crazy!” it cried to the estimators. “Who ever told you that you could estimate?Somebody must be paying you to boost the place! Get out of the way and let us send down some regular estimators!” So the company sent down some new estimators; and these estimators in turn looked over the ground and did some careful estimating. They then returned and reported that the population in ten years’ time would be one hundred and twenty thousand. The telephone company, without more ado, installed a switchboard based on that estimate. But the Miami people claim that the estimators were making stationary estimates, and that the difference between the estimates of the first and the second estimators was merely due to the fact that the city had moved forward between their visits. If they had known how to place themselvesen rapport, so to speak, with the city and move forward with it, both of them would have estimated that the population would be two hundred thousand in ten years’ time.
At any rate, the real-estate operations inMiami—and the word Miami, by the way, is pronounced My-amma by every one except the uncultured folk who insist on pronouncing it as spelled—the real-estate operations in Miami are on a scale that will provide building lots for twenty million people by 1930.
OF REAL-ESTATE DEALERS—OF THE LARGE HANDSOME SALESMEN—OF NOISY AUCTIONS—OF ABSOLUTE AND UNABSOLUTE AUCTIONS—AND OF PRICES FOR EVERY POCKETBOOK
Theexact number of real-estate dealers in Miami is not known. Practically every one over eighteen years of age dabbles in real-estate at one time or another. Almost every one owns a lot somewhere that he is anxious to get rid of, although it is unanimously admitted by the owners that every lot in Miami will double in value in a year’s time. Almost every other doorway along Miami’s crowded streets shelters a real-estate firm; and whole coveys of real-estate firms are frequently sheltered in buildings that would be considered small by a family of three people.
Some of the firms keep impressive-looking salesmen standing just outside of thebuilding in which the firms do business. These salesmen are large, handsome men for the most part, strikingly dressed in white trousers, pearl gray sack coats, white shoes, white belts, white neckties and straw hats tilted knowingly toward the right ear. If one stops for a moment to admire a window display which shows automobiles, diamonds and tax-exempt bonds sprouting from the super-fertile soil of land that is on sale within at one thousand dollars an acre, one of the salesmen is very apt to come up behind him and tempt him with honeyed words. It is almost futile to struggle against these salesmen. Unless one possesses an iron will, he will weakly permit himself to be coaxed within the portals of the office, where he will spend the better part of an hour looking at meaningless maps and hearing large sums of money mentioned with the utmost carelessness and disrespect.
Other real-estate firms constantly carry on selling campaigns that strongly resemble—innoise, at least—the return of the Twenty-seventh Division from the War. They resort to brass bands, numbers of sight-seeing automobiles, silver-tongued orators to cajole the crowd, and advertisements that inflame the acquisitive spirit of every beholder. When newcomers see a monster parade of automobiles, headed by a blaring band, swinging through the streets of Miami, they usually think, in their innocence, that a three-ring circus has come to town. As a matter of fact, it is only the firm of Yammer & Yawp taking a mob of prospects out to its daily auction sale of lots at Rubber Plant Park.
Skilled and expensive real-estate auctioneers are imported from California and New York—auctioneers capable of selling refrigerating machines to inhabitants of the Arctic Circle. People are lured to the auctions by free lunches, by distribution of souvenirs, by the giving away of automobiles. “We give away,” advertises one subdivision owner, “a new Ford car each Monday or its equivalent in cash, and other valuable gifts daily for the duration of the sale. And we will entertain those who attend the sales with Any Amusements We Are Able To Provide.” The exact meaning of the last phrase is shrouded in mystery, but it makes its appeal to those who read between the lines.
“Remember,” shouts another firm, “Remember, We Are Giving Away Absolutely Gratis a Sedan to the Person Holding the Lucky Number—Get Your Free Ticket Now.” “Auction! Auction! Auction!” bawls another. “Beautiful and useful souvenirs and prizes to be given away.” “Come ride in our busses and win our free prizes,” coaxes another.
Early in 1922 the real-estate firms which disposed of their land by auction were vociferating passionately that their auctions were bona fide, that they were “legitimate and sound,” that they were “without reserve,” that they were absolute. “Absolute auctions” was the watchword of the hour. The inference was, of course, that a number of auction sales had been held that were not absolute. “One Thousand Dollars Reward,” stated one firm in a dignified but bean-spilling manner, “will be paid for the proof of any buy-bidder at any of our sales. The opportunity of opportunities to buy a piece of the richest garden and fruit land in southern Florida. Remember, you make the price and every lot put up will positively be sold to the highest and best bidder without limit or reserve.”
This was what had been happening: Real-estate firms had advertised auctions, put up lots for sale, and, when those in attendance languidly refused to bid more than six or seven dollars for a lot, used professional buyers to make phony bids in order either to run up the price or get the lots off the market. It is possible that such a thing will never happen again, now that real-estatefirms have the habit of advertising absolute auctions—possible, but scarcely probable. With five or six auctions being held each day, and with large numbers of unattractive lots being offered to stolid middle-westerners who have come more for the free lunch and the automobile ride than for the real-estate, it is inevitable that some lots will go for about one dollar and seventy-five cents if everything is left in the hands of the legitimate prospects. Common sense tells us that no real-estate dealer could stand such a blow without emitting raucous shrieks of pain, no matter how persuasively and convincingly he may chatter about absolute auctions.
Some of the real-estate dealers allow customers to buy land on terms that would attract even Trotsky, who doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. Four-hundred-dollar lots in one subdivision can be had for twenty dollars cash and ten dollars a month, with no interest or taxes for a year. Inanother subdivision, one-thousand-two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar lots sell for one hundred dollars cash and twenty-five dollars a month until twenty per cent. of the principal has been paid, after which the buyer can sink back and refrain from paying any more on his principal for seven and a half years. A firm advertises island water-front lots at five thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars a lot, the terms being “seven hundred and fifty cash; balance five hundred every six months; no interest first year; no taxes till spring 1925.”
OF SUBDIVISIONS, WISE AND OTHERWISE—OF LANDSCAPE ATROCITIES—OF SMALL FARMS AND FARMERS—AND OF FASCINATING STRAWBERRY AND TOMATO STATISTICS
Subdivisionsextend out of Miami in all directions—up the coast and down the coast and inland and out into the bay in the shape of islands. Palm Beach is seventy-five miles north of Miami; and there are almost enough subdivisions along that seventy-five mile stretch to provide homes for a million people.
Some of the subdivisions are beautiful and some of them are horrible. Some have been thoroughly cleared of the tangled jungle of palmettos and other scrub that makes a total mess of all undeveloped Florida land; and flawless roads and pavements have been constructed, water mains put in, and gas, water and electricity provided.Restrictions are imposed in some of the good ones: homes costing less than four thousand can not be built on certain lots, while on other lots they must cost at least fifteen thousand.
Other subdivisions are laid out purely and simply, as the saying goes, for the purpose of separating the sucker from his money. The streets are half-laid, the location is vile, and the shacks that are run up on the crowded lots are little better than the marshhuts of Revere Beach and Coney Island to which poverty-stricken city dwellers of Boston and New York frequently repaired during the heated terms of the early; ’eighties.
On top of these depressing spectacles, many of which may some day be partly obscured in tropical verdure, certain enterprising citizens of Miami have added to Florida’s scenic beauties by lining the roadsides with blatant sign-boards setting forth the delights of garages, restaurants, clothing emporia and similar enterprises. Not content with building self-sustaining sign-boards which protrude gauntly and repulsively from the flat landscape and convince the newcomer that he is approaching a slum-city, they have nailed countless numbers of huge yellow monstrosities to the palms and fruit-trees along the highways—signs that have no influence on any one except the lover of beauty, and which only serve to fill him with contempt for people who can permit the few natural beauties of their surroundings to be so befouled. In the North one expects to find—as he does find—a plague of sign-boards, and hideous summer resorts whose predominant features are those of the awful and tasteless ’eighties. In the new South, however, which lures tourists with honeyed words and promises of every sort of beauty, the erecting of roadside sign-boards should be viewed with as much disgust and loathing as grapefruit-stealing or murder—both ofwhich crimes fall under somewhat the same head in Miami.
Spreading through and beyond the subdivisions are the orange and grapefruit groves, and the truck gardens and vegetable farms. Oranges and grapefruit are so common in southern Florida that grapefruit are served free in many of the hotels; while many other hotels keep large bowls of free oranges alongside the ice-water tank. So far as is known, these are the only things that one has a chance of getting for nothing in Florida hotels.
There are hundreds of three-acre and five-acre farms owned by northerners who didn’t like winter, and ran away from it with one or two thousand dollars in their pockets. Many of these little farmers not only manage to make both ends meet, but even salt away comfortable bank rolls. One little town near Miami shipped sixty-one thousand quarts of strawberries to northern cities during the first six weeks of the 1922season, and the growers’ share of the spoils was fifty cents a quart. The wise strawberry farmers, who plant their land to velvet beans during the summer and plow them under in September, and otherwise indulge in the clever tricks of the trade, get some very snappy results. One of the best strawberry farmers near Miami had four and one-tenth acres of land planted to strawberries in 1921. His first berries came in on December twentieth, and he picked twice a week until July fifteenth. The total yield of his four and one-tenth acres was 41,059 quarts, his average price for each quart was forty-five cents, and his gross sales amounted to slightly over eighteen thousand five hundred dollars. His total expenses were a little over six thousand dollars.
More than eight thousand acres are planted to tomatoes in the vicinity of Miami, and nearly five hundred thousand crates were shipped north during the 1921 season. These tomatoes bring the growers aboutthree dollars a crate, of which about a dollar and seventy-five cents must be charged off to fertilizer, labor, hauling and crating. The life of a tomato farmer is not a happy one, for the crop is very sensitive to wet weather. It is also very sensitive to dry weather. The slightest nip of frost also puts a severe crimp in it. Some of the tomato farmers say that the plant is so sensitive that if a man cusses or chews tobacco in its vicinity, it will refuse to bear. In spite of all this, there are plenty of tomato-lovers to plant tomatoes every winter, and some of them have made fortunes out of this popular fruit—or vegetable.
OF THE SUSPICIOUS STORIES CONCERNING THE MANGO—OF THE PET MANGO OF THE MIAMIANS—AND OF ITS SUPERIORITY TO OTHER THINGS
Thecupidity of farmers who are sick of northern winters is easily aroused by prices obtained for the best varieties of mangoes. “Their rich, spicy flavor, tempting fragrance and beautiful coloring,” say the Miami prospecti, “make them one of the most tempting table desserts that can be imagined.” Miami, it appears, has a monopoly on this fruit, and the catalogues rub in the bad news by adding that “this monopoly is not only confined to the cultivation, but also to the exquisite joy of eating it, as very few find their way to the northern markets, the local demand far exceeding the supply.” One reads that the choicest varieties “readily sell in the northern markets for from one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents each,” thus confirming the skeptical northerner in the belief of the late P. T. Barnum that there was one born every minute. The weak spot in this argument is not visible offhand to the doubting Thomases from the North who spend the winter in Florida. The mango ripens in summer—in June and July—so the winter visitors can not sink their teeth in the widely advertised fruit. Consequently they always feel sure that there is some good reason why the Florida people prefer the exquisite joy of eating the mango to the even more exquisite joy of shaking down their northern brothers for one dollar and fifty cents per mango.
Strangely enough, there is no Ethiopian concealed anywhere in the mango woodpile, although any one who aspires to become a mango-grower may have his first fine enthusiasm dashed by the fact that mango trees don’t begin bearing until five to seven years after they have been set out; and sevenyears is a long time to wait, especially if one is hunting for quick returns.
The mango in its finest form, however, is worth waiting seven years for. The mango with which northerners are familiar is a small, mottled, unhealthy-looking fruit about the size of a large lemon. The interior is partly mushy and partly stringy, and it gets tangled up in the teeth in a most annoying manner. The general effect obtained from dallying with it is that the mango is a total loss. The pet mango of the Miamians is a very different proposition. It is known as the Hayden mango, and is about the size of a large coconut. When ripe it is rosy red all over, and has the fragrance of a flower. It is a baffling fruit to open, as its seed is about the size and shape of the cuttle-bone used as an aid to canaries’ digestions. The unskilled mango eater will frequently wreck an entire mango trying to worry it open gently; but he eventually learns that onemust wring its neck in a brutal manner to get the best results.
The meat of the Hayden mango is sweeter than that of any other fruit I know; and it has a peculiar and delicious taste and aroma of pine forests. Years ago my grandfather, in the spring of the year, would go prowling through the New Hampshire woods; and on his return he would bring with him a lardpail full of the tender, slippery, fragrant inner lining of the bark of pine trees, locally known as “slyver.” This was always seized with delighted acclaim by the entire family and wolfed down greedily because of its delicious piney taste. The Hayden mango has the same piney taste raised to the thirty-third or master’s degree. One Hayden mango makes an ample dessert for two people; and I have not found that the Miamians are averse to selling them, or that the prices are as high as the catalogues claim. Packages of six Hayden mangoes have beensent to me repeatedly from Miami by parcel post at three dollars a half dozen.
The Miami catalogues are a trifle wild when they start raving about the exquisite joy of eating a mango that costs a dollar and a half; but if one can get a good Hayden mango for half a dollar, it will probably strike him as being considerably better than such ordinary matters as oatmeal gruel, baked beans, suet pudding, griddle cakes, fried bananas, bread pudding, or a poke in the eye with a pointed stick.
OF THE EVERGLADES AND OF THE TWO SEASONS OBTAINING IN THAT DAMP LOCALITY—AND OF GRASS, FANCY AND OTHERWISE
Offto the west of Miami lie the Everglades, first made famous by the Seminole War, when the United States Army spent upward of fifteen years trying to chase the Seminoles out of the Everglades but seldom saw more than three Seminoles at one time. The Everglades, not so long ago, was an enormous shallow lake eight thousand square miles in area, dotted with half-submerged islands out of which grew giant whiskered live oaks and countless varieties of tropical plants. The alligator basked in its shadowed streams; and the graceful panther lurked among the undergrowth, constantly ready to emit a bloodcurdling scream calculated to make the hardiest intruder think longingly of home and mother. Exploration was made almost impossible by a saw-toothed grass which grew throughout the Everglades and extended several feet above the water, so that the person who tried to force his way through it would cut everything to shreds up to and including his eyebrows. People talked for years of draining the Everglades; but such talk was usually received with screams of laughter that rivaled the yells of the Everglades panthers.
Several years ago the State of Florida settled down in earnest to the systematic draining of the Everglades. Canals were cut, giant locks were installed to control the water level, and the land was cleared. Thousands of acres are being reclaimed each year, settlers are moving in constantly, and the reclaimed land is yielding vegetables and fruits of a size and quality to make a Maine farmer shake his head dubiously and wonder whether that last batch of licker that the sheriff sent him had affected his eyes. Thesoil is a rich black muck which has resulted from centuries of decaying vegetation; and anything that will grow will grow about twice as large and twice as rapidly in the Everglades as it will anywhere else. There used to be only two seasons in the Everglades—wet and wetter; but now there is a dry season; and in the course of a few years, when the fruit-trees begin to bear, the Everglades alone will be in a position to supply every northern city throughout the winter with all the newfangled and oldfangled fruits and vegetables that can be desired.
The thousands of farmers who have retired from active farming and are occupying their winters by absorbing the sun in Miami and pitching horseshoes in Royal Palm Park become fearfully excited over the various varieties of grass that are raised in the Everglade lands. Grass is not a thing that one would expect to mention at any length in a casual dissertation on a winter resort; but the excessive wondermentover it on the part of the horseshoe pitchers requires some mention of grass. It appears that some of the grasses that have come in thick enough to get themselves talked about are Para, Bermuda, Rhodes, Natal, Sudan, St. Lucia, St. Augustine, Napier, Broom, sage, Guatemalan, panicum, crab grass, maiden cane, Billion Dollar grass and several others. There seems to be everything but just plain grass. The chief idea of the farmers seems to be that with all this grass, the Florida stock raisers can have evergreen pasturage, and cattle can be fed on about a third of the space that they need in the North.
This, of course, is important if true; but the average person who comes to Miami is not interested in grass except as something on which to play golf or sit. What he wants is usually holiday relaxation and plenty of it; and if that’s what he wants, he can get so much of it in and near Miami that one week of complete relaxation must usually be followed by two weeks of recuperation.
OF THE OLD MIAMI AND THE NEW MIAMI—OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MIAMI BEACH AND PALM BEACH—OF THE SCENIC POSSIBILITIES IN FLOATING COCONUTS AND THE ACTIVITIES OF JOHN S. COLLINS
Thepeople who knew Miami prior to 1918 have in their minds an entirely different place from the Miami of to-day. The old Miami was a city first and a winter resort afterward. This statement will, of course, offend the touchy Miami folk; but it is true none the less. It was—and is—a hustling, bustling, booming, noisy city with about one automobile for each seven-eighths of an inhabitant, and with perpetual warmth and sunshine. In the long run, however, the big-money tourists don’t want to go to a hustling, bustling, rapidly growing city for their winter holidays, even though the city may boast perpetual warmth and sunshine.What they want is clean air and plenty of sun and sky, and a complete change from the scenery to which they are accustomed in their northern cities, and a surcease from all noises except the noises they make themselves—which are frequently much louder than the ordinary noises of a city. For that reason Palm Beach was in a class by itself. The big-money tourists went to Palm Beach. Miami got a smattering of them, but a very small smattering. Palm Beach sneered at Miami Beach and called it “the Coney Island of Florida.”
That, however, was prior to 1918. To-day Miami has been augmented by Miami Beach; and eventually Miami Beach will nose out ahead of Palm Beach and get all the youngsters and live wires who like to be on the jump from eight in the morning until three and four and five o’clock the next morning—with occasional busy evenings which will keep them up until six or seven in the morning. Palm Beach folk still sneer
Photograph by F. A. RobinsonThe outdoor swimming pool on a private estate in Miami.
Photograph by F. A. RobinsonThe outdoor swimming pool on a private estate in Miami.
Photograph by F. A. Robinson
The outdoor swimming pool on a private estate in Miami.
Any January morning at Miami Beach.
Any January morning at Miami Beach.
Any January morning at Miami Beach.
A January afternoon tea-dance on the shore of Biscayne Bay.
A January afternoon tea-dance on the shore of Biscayne Bay.
A January afternoon tea-dance on the shore of Biscayne Bay.
at Miami Beach and still, according to their ancient custom, call it the Coney Island of Florida. But it isn’t the Coney Island of Florida; and Palm Beach is frightened for the first time in years—frightened that the wealthy tourists will desert the endless corridors of her hotels and the continuous clothes-changing and the eternal chatter and twaddle of society and near-society and the lifeless air of Bradley’s Roulette Emporium, and get down to Miami, where there’s something doing every minute, and where people go into dinner in golf clothes without getting a hard look from the head waiter.
The story of Miami Beach is a remarkable one and without it Miami would scarcely be able to get out gaudy prospectuses with pictures of beautifully shaped ladies in red one-piece bathing suits on the covers. This is the way of it:
Miami’s palm-shaded streets run down to the shores of Biscayne Bay, which is a strip of water some seven miles long andbetween two and three miles wide. Between the bay and the ocean is a long narrow tongue of land, not much over a mile in width at its widest point. Prior to 1913, ninety-nine per cent. of this narrow tongue of land was a worthless jungle. The man who owned it is said to have bought it for twelve thousand dollars. The only way of reaching it was by ferry boat, and there was nothing on it in the line of a winter resort except a bathing shack on the beach at the extreme tip, to which a few tourists occasionally repaired when the urge for sea bathing became almost too intense to be endured.
A persistent attempt had been made to utilize the natural advantages of this narrow tongue of sand and jungle. In 1884 some New Jersey business men essayed to plant coconuts on it in sufficient quantities to make the venture profitable. There were no railroads, and it could only be reached by boat. Three shiploads of coconuts were brought from the island of Trinidad. Theships were anchored off the tongue of land; and when the wind blew toward the shore, the coconuts were dumped overboard to float to land. Three hundred and thirty-four thousand coconuts were sent ashore by the promoters of this scheme. They cost five cents apiece in Trinidad, and the freight figured up to six cents apiece. The venture became so costly that the promoters hunted around for more capital and succeeded in interesting a New Jersey fruit-grower named John S. Collins. As a commercial proposition, the coconut planting was a complete failure. But as a flyer in landscape architecture, it was a great success; for the entire ocean-front of the tongue of land was fringed with beautiful coconut palms.
The original coconut planters dropped out as their failure became apparent. Collins and one other man hung on to their narrow and apparently worthless piece of land. In the center of it was some high ground on which Collins conceived the idea of startinga grove of avocados, better known as alligator pears. The avocado shuns frost as an Epworth Leaguer shuns cocktails; and since there is no frost worthy of the name on the tongue of land because of its water-protection on both sides, Collins figured that avocado culture could be made to pay. He was right; and his avocado grove is now the largest in the world. The speed with which he worked, however, didn’t meet the approval of his one remaining partner; so Collins bought him out, becoming the sole owner of the narrow sand-spit with the avocado grove down its backbone.
It then began to dawn on Collins, who was seventy-four years old and therefore able to see a good many things that younger men overlooked, that his sand-spit was a pleasant place on which to live during the winter and summer too, but that he probably couldn’t persuade people to live there until he made it possible for people to get there. Consequently he conceived the idea of building awooden bridge two and one-half miles in length—the longest vehicle bridge in the world—between Miami and the sand-spit.
The bridge was started in July, 1912; and, as has always been customary in the early developments of Florida, his friends, attorneys and bankers almost had heart-failure over his wild scheme. They prophesied enthusiastically that in about two years’ time he would be standing at the Miami end of his unfinished bridge, begging for nickels with which to get a square meal. The population of Miami at that time was about seven thousand five hundred.
At one time, late in 1912, the amateur prophets were looking gloomily at Collins and saying proudly to each other: “Well, I told him so!” The bridge was such a tremendous undertaking that the Collins money began to pinch out; and no local talent could be found to advance any sum larger than nine dollars on the chance of making a success out of the bridge or the sand-spit.
OF THE ARRIVAL OF CARL FISHER IN MIAMI—OF FISHER’S FEVERISH IMAGINATION AND VIOLENT DREAMS—OF THE DESPAIR OF FISHER’S FRIENDS—AND OF THE EVOLUTION OF A JUNGLE
Earlyin 1913, a wealthy Indianapolis business man named Carl G. Fisher came to Miami for his health. Fisher, from the days when he used to be a news butcher on Indiana trains, was able to see the possibilities in things which every one else regarded as impossibilities. He had always plunged heavily on his beliefs while his friends and acquaintances stood on the side-lines and told one another what a shame it was that Carl had gone bugs. One of his plunges had been the big Indianapolis Speedway—a gigantic structure which does all its business, pays its expenses and makes its profits on one day out of the year.
Collins, unable to complete his bridgealone, went to Fisher and asked him for assistance. Fisher, with his ever-present willingness to take a chance, supplied Collins with the necessary funds to finish the job, taking in return a large and unprepossessing slice of the long, narrow, jungle-grown sand-spit that shut Miami off from the sea. He immediately began to take a passionate interest in that desolate piece of real estate. In his feverish mind’s eye he saw it covered with the greatest winter resort of modern times—with acres of beautiful homes, and hotels bowered in towering palms and scarlet-flowered hibiscus; with polo fields and golf links and tennis courts and ice-rinks: with lagoons and canals and artificial islands and Venetian gondolas: with casinos and bath-houses and outdoor swimming pools that would outdo anything in America or Europe.
He let himself go with the utmost enthusiasm, and kept his imagination working on a twenty-two-hour day. His friendsgave up all hope for him. “Poor Fisher!” they murmured privately behind his back. “Poor Fisher has gone completely loco. We must make arrangements to put him away quietly.”
After he had dreamed a few of his more violent dreams, he went out to the sand-spit to look it over more carefully and decide definitely where to put a few of the hotels and casinos. Around its shores he found a solid wall of mangroves whose interlaced roots rose several feet out of the water in such a confused and slimy jumble that any appreciable progress through them was a matter of hours. So he got a gang of twelve negroes and set them to work hacking a hole all the way through this jungle. Beyond the mangrove swamp was a solidly interlaced growth of cabbage palms and palmettos through which no human being could force a passage without tearing his clothes and his skin to shreds. The palm and palmetto growth filled every part ofhis property except the shores—and the shores were overgrown with mangroves.
Greatly cheered and stimulated by these obstacles, he promptly set to work on his scheme to build, almost overnight, America’s greatest winter resort. Starting at the extreme tip of the tongue, his gangs of laborers cleared off the mangroves, cabbage palms, palmettos and other scrub. They found bear in it, and panther and countless numbers of smaller animals, and quail by the thousands. Then along the edges of the tongue they built high cement bulkheads. As the bulkheads were finished, dredgers pumped sand and water out of Biscayne Bay and inside the bulkheads. The water ran off, but the sand remained and turned the swamps and marshes into solid land. This work required dredging crews of one hundred and fifty men, three pumping boats, two digging boats, from ten to fifteen barges, five supply boats, two oil tugs, two anchor boats and an eighteen-inch pipe lineover a mile in length. For eight months the pay roll was four thousand dollars a day, and Fisher’s friends daily became more insistent that he be locked up where he could no longer throw his money into the Atlantic Ocean.
Canals and inland waterways were dug so that future residents might have easy access to all portions of the resort by yacht, house-boat and motor-boat. Palms, hibiscus and tropical plants and vines slowly crept along in the rear of the dredging operations. Fifty acres were turned into polo fields. Three hundred and twenty-five acres were set aside for golf courses. Three excellent golf courses were made, two at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars apiece, and one at a cost of a quarter million.
To-day, the tongue of land that was an impenetrable jungle in 1913 and a waste of sand in 1917, has become the city of Miami Beach. Its value has grown from twelve thousand to twenty million. There may besome to question the latter figure; but the accessed value of Miami Beach property in 1921 was $5,540,112; and unimproved property was being assessed at one-quarter of its valuation, while improved property was being assessed at one-tenth of its valuation. It has a frontage of six miles on the ocean, seven miles on Biscayne Bay, and sixteen miles on inland waterways and canals—though a Miami Beach enthusiast would no more think of listing Miami Beach property in miles than a jeweler would think of listing diamonds in quarts. It is too precious. He lists it in feet, and tells you that the frontage on inland waterways is eighty-five thousand feet. In a few years, if he progresses in the future as he has in the past, he’ll probably be listing it in inches.
OF EXPENSIVE EXPENSES AND HEATED ICE-RINKS—OF LILY ON LILY THAT O’ERPLACE THE SEA—AND OF THE BONEHEADEDNESS OF MOST OF THE HUMAN RACE
In1913 Miami Beach was an impenetrable jungle on a sand-spit and a swamp. In 1922 many a water-front lot was being sold for double the price that was paid for the original jungle not so many years ago.
In place of the sand and the swamp and the jungle there are over forty miles of street and roads, lined with palms and shrubs. Several hotels have been built, the largest of which—the Flamingo—looks exactly like a grain elevator and has the reputation of being the most expensive winter resort hotel in the world. As a matter of fact, it is no more expensive than the big Palm Beach hotels—although that is sufficiently expensive to send the cold shiversup and down the spine of the person who hasn’t become thoroughly hardened to money-spending. Two people can have a nice room with bath and all the food they want—in reason—for forty dollars a day. They can also have free oranges, which somehow seems to remove some of the numbing pain from the impact of the bill against the brain. There is no particular reason why it should, as one can easily drown himself in the juice from a dollar’s worth of oranges.
There are a score and more of apartment-houses, and three hundred and fifty private residences ranging from unconsciously simple little ten-thousand-dollar bungalows up to artfully simple little two-hundred-thousand-dollar cottages.
Within another six years, according to the more sane and conservative Miami Beach predicters, there will be six or seven more hotels at Miami Beach, all larger than the Flamingo. Fisher has another modestcaravansary planned which is to have an ice-rink, covered tennis courts and a tanbark horse-show enclosure on the roof. Unless his friends lock him up, he is sure to carry out his plans—which will probably be as highly successful as his past ventures.
A few of his friends no longer fear for his sanity. His former business partner in Indianapolis, James A. Allison, has even helped the good work along by building and stocking at Miami Beach an aquarium that rivals the great aquariums of Monaco, Naples, Honolulu and Manila. A great many of his friends, however, still shake their heads pityingly when they hear mention of hotels with ice-rinks on the roof.
The dredging operations which had transferred sand from the bottom of Biscayne Bay to the top of Miami Beach had left several unsightly mud banks protruding a few inches from the surface of the bay. Fisher surrounded these mud banks with bulkheads and pumped more mud into them.The result was seven beautiful islands, most of which are already shaded by palm groves and dotted with simple but beautiful homes costing about thirty dollars a square inch. They are easy of access, since they are connected with the mainland or the causeway.
Some Miami people have likened these islands to lilies which o’erlace the sea, after the fashion of Senator Lodge quoting from Browning in an attempt to explain the islands of the Pacific to a concourse of hard-boiled hearers; but Palm Beach folk, with that peculiar jealousy evinced by the residents of one Florida resort toward everything in a rival Florida resort, say that they look more like floating flapjacks. The truth, of course, lies between; and when they are covered with masses of tropical foliage, there will be nothing flapjackish about them. One of the islands, together with an obelisk rising from its center, was constructed as a memorial to Henry M. Flagler, without whose vision and foresight Florida wouldprobably only be known as the place that Florida Water was named after. One of the largest islands has an area of sixty acres. A mile of bulkhead, with bulkheading at twelve dollars a foot, was necessary in its construction, and its total cost was half a million dollars.
The inability of ninety per cent. of the human race to see how a thing is going to look when finished has cost the human race a large amount of money at Miami Beach. Not long ago, for example, an effort was made to sell a new house for sixteen thousand dollars. It stood on new flat land, however, and there were no trees or shrubs around it. Everybody who saw it refused to buy it; so three thousand five hundred dollars was spent in planting grass, palms and flowers and adding walks and a boathouse. When this had been done, the house sold instantly for thirty thousand dollars to one of the men who had refused to pay sixteen thousand for it the preceding year.
OF ONE-PIECE AND TWO-FIFTHS-PIECE BATHING SUITS—OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN AND HIS ACTIVITIES—OF BOOTLEGGERS—OF THE SANCTIMONIOUS HAIG AND HAIG BOYS—AND OF RUM IN GENERAL.
Miamiand Miami Beach are now connected by a curving concrete causeway three and a half miles long. New and spacious as it is, it is often too small to accommodate the thousands of automobiles that hasten out to Miami Beach on hot Sunday afternoons in mid-winter in order that their occupants may obtain an eyeful, as the saying goes of the bathing crowds. The prudish element hasn’t yet been able to make its influence felt at Miami Beach to any noticeable extent. The one-piece bathing suit is heavily displayed by engaging young women, and there are also large numbers of bathing suits which appear to beone-half-piece or even two-fifths-piece. The latter variety of bathing suit is never worn with stockings; for no stockings—so far as is known—have yet been made long enough to reach to the hips. A striking effect is frequently obtained by the wearers of these two-fifths-piece bathing suits when they stroll out on the beach in short, hip-length capes which hang open negligently at the throat. One sees nothing below the cape but several square yards of flesh, and nothing above the cape but several square feet of flesh. It is a sight that gives one pause. When one sees it for the first time, he feels that he ought to hunt up a life-saver sometime later in the day and ask him to go and speak to the young woman and tell her that she has come out without her two-fifths-piece bathing suit. But one soon becomes accustomed to seeing such things—so accustomed, in fact, that one feels disappointed if he doesn’t see them.
The Honorable William Jennings Bryan