Temperate by Common Consent

1899

Who can name a county which, without making "prohibition" an issue or legally forbidding liquor-selling, has not for thirty years contained a saloon? A correspondent of the Atlanta Constitution, on the track of a gold-mining "boom," professes to have found such an one — Union County, Georgia.

"If you were snake-bitten," said a prominent citizen to me the other day at the county-seat, "I believe you could not get a drop of liquor in the town to save your life."

In this county seventy-five per cent of the people own their homes. In the county-seat, only one family does not own its home. There is not a dollar of bonds on the county, and with the tax rate three times larger this year than usual, the total state and county tax amounts to only one dollar and fifteen cents on one hundred dollars.

Union County lies among the mountains of the Blue Ridge. The court-house is forty miles north of Gainesville, about one hundred miles on an air-line north of Atlanta, and about ten miles south of the Tennessee line. The quickest way to reach Blairsville, the county-seat of Union, from Atlanta is to go to Blueridge on the Atlanta, Knoxville & Northern Railway, and drive across the country twenty-six miles along the beautiful valleys and over the mountains.

I was told by a number of reputable citizens that there are many people in the county who have never seen a railroad. The eastern part of the county is probably forty miles from the nearest station in one direction, and fifty miles in the other. — Youth's Companion.