From: The Dunnellon Citizen C. Y. Miller, Publisher
Published Every Friday Member of the Florida Press Assn.
Ore Dollar a Year Affiliated with the National Editorial Assn.
The following was first printed in the Ocala Banner in 1899:
A Tribute to a Benefactor Written by L. L. Aiken
While you and I differ in politics, it does seem to me that the pulse
of the good old Banner – whom the people of Marion County of all political
parties love so well – beats to the time of the best thought of the nation.
The spirit which prompted the paragraph that appeared in your issue of
a week or so ago, vizt “Are we not overdoing this Dewey business?” I find
is awakening an echo in many newspapers throughout the country. Admiral
Dewey himself, and more the man he is for it, recognizes that it has been
somewhat overdone, and has had the good sense to cancel the engagements
where it is proposed to make a circus exhibition of him.
We all know that Cerrera’s was in all respects superior to Montoja’s.
Yet the nation has not gone into a wild spasm of fury over Schley, the hero
of Santiago. Why? What school boy is it that does not know that Schley did
as perfect, as graceful, as patriotic and heroic a piece of work in sinking
Cerrera’s magnificent warships as Dewey did in annihilating Montojo’s?
We are all, more or less, hero worshippers, so far be it from me to
pluck a single laurel from Admiral Dewey’s brow. I want every sprig in that
wreath he is entitled to to cluster there, but it don’t seem just the proper
thing tocpay so much honor to the one and so little to the other? I hope
there’s nothing sectional about it.
I am also a hero worshipper. The hero that I shall mention in your
columns wears no gold braid, no glittering gems, no helmet, no flashing
sword, no nodding plumes, yet in the face of the belief that the statement
will be received with derision, I am going to say in all seriousness that
every farmer, every merchant, every railroad owner, every ship’s owner, and
every capitalist ever so remotely connected with the state, every tiller of
the soil, and every holder of the pick, owes a debt of gratitude to my hero,
an humble neighbor of mine, than to either Dewey or Schley, the world’s
famous naval heroes.
I refer to my friend, Mr. Albertus Vogt, the discoverer of Florida
hard rock phosphate.
As a benefactor of the human race, he outranks them both, with General
Shatter thrown in.
Instead of a heritage of woe, which always follows in the wake of war,
Mr. Vogt’s discovery has blessed the human race of two hemispheres along the
paths of peace.
What would Florida have been today had it not been for Mr. Vogt’s
discovery? It seems to have come in the very nick of time. Without that.
discovery, and with the destruction of our groves, our people would have had
nothing to buoy them up and would have been without faith and without hope.
I remember when Mr. Vogt settled on the now beautiful place near the
historic banks of the Withlacoochee river. That has been fifteen years ago.
This region then was almost a desolate wilderness. Mr. Vogt was a hustler
before his discovery. The whistle of the iron horse soon followed. Then came
his discovery. Trade, traffic, and commerce begun an epoch, from that very
day and the whole aspect of the country has undergone a change – none in the
history of the world more wonderful.
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The dollars that Mr. Vogt’s discovery caused to change hands and has
since been employed in the channel of trade, and in one way or another have
found their way into the pockets of others sorely needing them, is beyond
computation.
This section today is one of the most prosperous on earth. Our farmers
have a market at their very doors for all the truck they can grow – the demand
keeping up with supply. If our farmers are not making money, it is their own
fault. They sell all they can grow and for what they sell they will get hard
cash.
Dunnellon, though but ten years old, is known all over the world. It
has two good newspapers, with jobs attached, churches, schools, mercantile
houses galore, a mayor and marshall, and all the paraphenalia of a city
government. It has deep water to the sea – for which we are largely indebted
to Mr, Vogt’s tireless and intelligent labors. It is the richest mining dis-
trict on the globe. It has a monthly payroll in its immediate neighborhood
of over two-hundred thousand dollars. Prosperous mining towns have sprung
into existence from the Suwanee river on the north to Port Tanpa on the south,
and the wealth all along this once barren section is written even by some
individuals with seven figures, and the output of rock has helped to enrich
the earth.
If he “who makes two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before”
is a benefactor to the world, then indeed my hero is a benefactor.
His discovery, if it has not already done so, will in the end richly
carpet the whole earth with grass, yet nobody is building, or proposing to
build, a mansion for Albertus Vogt, and he wouldn’t accept it if one were
tendered him. He was born on the wrong side of the Potomac for that.
But every individual putting up a phosphate plant in this state all con-
ciously is erecting a monument to Albertus Vogt, and will remain so through
all time to his memory.
It is almost appalling to think what would be the condition of Florida
today had it not been for Mr. Vogt’s opportune discovery. Instead of universal
desolation and distress following in the pathway of the great freeze which
swept to the ground every orange tree for a distance of three hundred miles
(the greatest calamity that ever befell any state), we hear instead, the glad
song of the pick and shovel, and the whir of the wheels of busy industry.
I lift my voice in praise of the man who made these things possible.
__ L. L. Aiken, in the
Ocala Banner 1899