factory for the manufacture of bone knife handles and numerous cigar factories.

One of the largest industries in the vicinity is grape culture and wine making. In 1858 John P. Wild, an accomplished viticulturist and entomologist, conducted a series of experiments which led him to the conviction that the soil of the region was admirably adapted to the production of a fine quality of wine making grapes, and with this encouragement the farmers and lot owners devoted their lands to this purpose. At the first only the Isabella and Catawba grapes were raised, the Lawton being then unknown. At a later day and under the leadership of Captain Charles Saalman, an industrious and intelligent grape culturist, the Norton, the Ives and the Clevner grape were mixed so judiciously as to produce a red wine of the Burgundy type, equal in all respects to the foreign product. So successful were their efforts that in 1872 about seven hundred acres were planted in vineyard, and large stone vaults were built for wine manufacture and storage. The wines from these vineyards received first medals at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

The wine industry prospered beyond expectation until 1886, when the grape rot made its appearance and devastated the vineyards of the region, discouraging growers to such a degree that many acres of vines were uprooted and the land devoted to field crops. A spraying remedy finally proved efficacious, and grape culture has been for some years regaining its former importance.

Mays Landing, the county seat of Atlantic county, is situated at the head of navigation of Great Egg Harbor River, and is a station on the West Jersey and Sea Shore Railway. It has all the advantages of a modern community—waterworks, electric lighting and telephone service. Educational and religious institutions are liberally maintained.

Out of a population of 1,200, more than five hundred persons are employed in various manufacturing works. The leading mechanical industry is that of the Mays Landing Cotton Mills, employing four hundred persons; a brick yard employing seventy-five persons, and a Women's wrapper manufactory, employing eighty persons. Other works are those principally connected with the lumber industry.

Hammonton, in the northern part of Atlantic county, on the Atlantic City Railroad and the West Jersey and Sea Shore Railroad, is a thriving city with 3,481 inhabitants. It has all the conveniences of a progressive industrial town. Churches and schools are well supported and prosperous. The city has electric light and gas for illumination, and water works are in course of construction. The manufacturing establishments include a shoe

factory employing seventy-five people; a cut glass manufactory, a macaroni bakery, saw mills and other industries. The town is beautifully built, and its attractiveness is enhanced by Hammonton Lake, a charming expanse of water.

In former years Hammonton was the home of numerous celebrities known to all Americans. Charlotte Cushman, the accomplished actress, was owner of a large tract of land near the village, and there, for a time, Colonel Obertypher, a Hungarian exile and a friend of Kossuth, made his home. Samuel Wylie Crawford, a Civil war brigadier-general who won great distinction at the battle of Cedar Mountain, was once principal of the high school here. Others of wide fame were Solon Robinson, farmer, horticulturist and author; .Ada Clare, the "Queen of Bohemia," whose tragic death ended a picturesque life; James M. Peebles, scholar, traveler and writer; William Hoppin, a poet of no mean order; Eloise Randall Richberg, whose pen wove many a pleasing romance; and Libbie Canfield, who became the wife of Brigham Young, junior.

Port Republic, a village of three hundred inhabitants, on the west bank of the Mullica River, is in near proximity to Chestnut Neck, which was the scene of important events in Colonial and Revolutionary times. There was made the first settlement in what is now known as Atlantic county, in 1637, when John Mullica sailed up the river which took his name and became the division line between the Provinces of East and West Jersey. Many families of the present day are descended from the Quaker colony which was formed there about that time, under William Penn.

When the independence of the Colonies was proclaimed. Chestnut Neck was the largest village on the Jersey coast, a veritable trade center, and its importance in this respect, and the active patriotism of its people, incited the British to burn it in 1777.

Old Weymouth, Batsto and Pleasant Mills, once among the most important industrial points in Southern Jersey, now mere hamlets, are noticed more fully in our chapter on "Manufactures." Atlantic City is written of at length in the chapter on "Shore Resorts."

Rio Grande, now a hamlet of less than a hundred inhabitants, in the southern portion of Cape May county, was for some years following after 1881 the scene of a pretentious manufacturing industry, which terminated disastrously.

In 1881 was passed by the State Legislature an act for the encouragement of the manufacture of sugar in New Jersey, and providing for the payment out of the public treasury of a bounty of one dollar per ton to the farmer for each ton of cane out of which crystallized cane sugar was actually

produced, and for the payment of a bounty of one cent per pound to the manufacturer for each pound of sugar actually made from such product. After the enactment of this bounty law the Senate requested the United States Agricultural Department to experiment with the sorghum plant in order to further its cultivation by the farmers of the State.

The firm of J. Hilgert's Sons, sugar refiners of Philadelphia, erected a large refinery at Rio Grande, at an expense exceeding $60,000. During the first year of its operation the refinery manufactured sugar from the cane produced on about seven hundred acres of land in the immediate vicinity. The product realized seven to eight cents per pound, and from the standpoint of the refiners the results were deemed reasonably satisfactory. The farmers, however, were greatly disappointed—the cane yield was but five tons per acre, where they had believed it would be ten tons, and the seed product was but twenty bushels instead of thirty, as they had expected. The largest cane grower in the vicinity realized from one hundred and twenty acres of land 641 tons of cane and 2,500 bushels of seed.

The Hilgerts were succeeded by the Rio Grande Sugar Company, which invested large sums of money in the purchase of lands and cane growing. Larger crops were grown and considerable sugar was made, but the difficulties were great—sugar depreciated ruinously in the market, and with existing methods of diffusion fifty per cent, of the saccharine matter in the cane remained unutilized. To add to these difficulties the State bounty was withdrawn in 1885 and the Rio Grande Sugar Company passed out of existence with the close of the year 1886, after having made lavish expenditures in futile attempts to render the process of diffusion (or extraction of saccharine matter) more economical.

Early in the following year Henry A. Hughes, a resident of Cape May City, who had been superintendent of the refinery from its institution, effected the organization of the Hughes Sugar Company, and with the co-operation of the United States Department of Agriculture built a small refinery having a capacity for working some twenty tons per diem. The machinery for topping, stripping and shredding the cane was of his own invention in greater part, and he also introduced a new process of diffusion. The results for the year were satisfactory in many respects. The experience derived, pointing to other improvements where saving could be made in time, labor and expense, also afforded encouragement. Numerous changes were planned which were expected to produce more satisfactory results, and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station appropriated a considerable sum to aid the enterprise. These plans, however. were not put into execution, and in 1890 the sorghum industry was abandoned.

Woodbine, a flourishing town of 1.400 population, in Cape May county,

owes its founding to the great Hebrew philanthropist, Baron de Hirsch, who in 1891 there founded a colony of Jews, principally Russians and Polanders, victims of Russian oppression. The title to the property com

prising a tract of 5,300 acres, was vested, by the terms of his will, in the Woodbine Land Investment Company. In 1894 was founded the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural and Industrial School, which was opened that year with forty-two students, and at the last report this number had been increased to ninety-six. The buildings comprise college buildings proper, and a dormitory building for teachers and pupils. The course of study embraces the English branches, with practical farming and dairying for young men and domestic employment for girls. In 1897 the town of Woodbine was platted. The location is ideal, and the inhabitants take great pride in beautifying their homes. The public buildings are a Hebrew synagogue, erected at a cost of $7,000; a Baptist church, which cost $2,500; two school buildings, one built by the Land Company and another by the school district. Among the industries are a clothing factory employing 168 people, a lock company employing 40 people; and a machine and tool works employing 28 people. The population includes 160 Hebrew and 34 Gentile families, and about one-half of the entire number own their homes.

CHAPTER II.

THE COAST AS THE SHORE RESORT OF NEW JERSEY—A CHAIN OF PRETTY TOWNS AND VILLAGES.

Within a space of time not much more than one-half a century, resorts for health and pleasure have been established at almost every available spot on the shores of the Atlantic, from the rugged ocean barriers of Maine to the coral reefs of Florida. Between these far separated extremes are cities and villages presenting every feature of attraction and desirability. There are spots, as along the more northern coast, which are delightful in summer, but are wellnigh uninhabitable in winter; and others, as in Florida, which are grateful to the winter sojourner, but almost unendurable during the remainder of the year.

Almost midway between these far geographical and climatic extremes lie the shores of New Jersey, stretching away from Sandy Hook to Cape May, affording the widest diversity of advantages and charms for permanent resident or temporary visitor, from a social standpoint, but not greatly dissimilar climatically. Here the cooling sea breezes from the far north mingle with the balmy zephyrs from the tropics, and the waters of the ocean, tempered by the warmth of the Gulf Stream, are unpolluted by stain or odor from factory or mine. The beach, floored with smoothest, cleanest sand that could not soil the fairest foot, is paralleled by path and drive ways ample for all manner of vehicles, for horseman and for cyclist.

Dotting this coast along its entire length is a succession of towns and villages so nearly approaching each other as to almost form one continuous line of human habitations, from the beautiful cottage to the elegant mansion, with their lawns and flower gardens of exuberant foliage and exquisite fragrance. The towns are of every characteristic save one—there is none given over to the vicious classes, and none where good morals are contemned or modesty offended.

There are veritable cities, with their church edifices which would grace a metropolis, libraries sufficient for all needs save those of the delver in the deepest fields of technical science, opera houses and club houses, and