Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/423

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as the Y. M. C. A. Building, new hotels, and the Semmes statue; the advance of literature, also, which has kept Augusta Evans as Mrs. Wilson, and added Madame Chaudron, Father Ryan, T. C. De Leon, Amélie Rives, Hannis Taylor, and others:—these things are important, but are too recent for detailed treatment.

The net result, however, is that Mobile has faced the political questions growing out of the war, the commercial conditions arising from the building of railroad systems eastward, the development of independent cities in what had been her exclusive territory, just as she has met so many other problems in her long history. What she could conquer she has overcome, and for what she must lose she has substituted other industries. Lumber, coal and iron far overbalance the loss of cotton, and there is no mean array of manufactures, while her railroad and steamship territory yearly increase. To-day her population, trade and prospects are greater than anything she has known before. She has had little of the outside capital which other towns have enjoyed, and she has had no "booms." But the great fire of 1890, the storm of 1893, and even pestilence in 1897 did not daunt her. In wealth, culture and