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Industrial Florida

Suniland Magazine

1925

The climate of Florida is unexcelled for the production of various species of Bamboo. This has numerous industrial possibilities including paper making, phonograph needles, porch swings and furniture, shipping containers, screens and ornamental pieces for the home, flower pots, brushes and brooms, fish poles, racks, trellises and stakes, and a number of other interesting items. Several extensive Bamboo plantations and manufacturing plants could be made quite profitable in Florida and we are thinking strongly of entertaining this idea in the Florida Industrial Society Contest.

Tobacco has been grown in some sections of Florida for many years, and now we understand there is opening up the interesting possibility of a big reduction of cigarette tobacco in this state. In this connection following from Fairbanks' "History of Florida" will be of interest. It is one of the earliest accounts of the use of tobacco and is quoted from the chronicles of the landing of Sir John Drake at Ft. Caroline on the St. John's River in 1564.

"The Floridians, when they travel, have a kind of herbe dried, who, with a cane, and earthen cup in the end with fire and the dried herbs put together, doe suck throu a cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live four or five days without meate or drinke; and this all the Frenchemen (Laudonniere's garrison) used for this purpose; yet doe they hold, withal that it causeth them to reject from their stomachs, and spit out water and phlegm."

Source:
Excerpt from: Hewlett, T.W., Hansford, R.S., eds. "Industrial Florida."
Suniland, Nov. 1925, Vol. 3, No. 2. Pg. 35