N&W in 1911--Lectures

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Bluefield Daily Telegraph
April 27, 1911

ILLUSTRATED LECTURES ON VIRGINIA GIVEN BY N. & W. RAILROAD [sic]
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    F. H. Lebaum*, agricultural and industrial agent of the Norfolk and Western Railway, has just returned from an extended trip in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio where the department he represents has been putting on a series of illustrated talks on Virginia and the Sunny South.  A set of more that one hundred beautiful colored slides are used portraying fruit, farm, crops, live stock and natural scenery.  These pictures are thrown on a large canvas with the aid of a large double dissolving view stereopticon.  Theaters and large halls or school houses are secured.  The entertainment is well advertised in advance and everyone is invited to come out and bring their friends.
    The entertainments are given at a different point each night and the adulation is always there.  After the lecture, literature is distributed and small souvenir pins representing a delicious Virginia apple are also given to those attending.  Mr. Lebaum reports good attendance at almost all points, varying from one hundred and fifty in the smaller towns to as high as six or seven hundred in the larger towns and cities.  Among points visited were the state agricultural colleges at Champaign, Illinois, and Perdue University Agricultural school at Lafayette, Indiana.  At both of these points the talk was given to the agricultural students who attended in a body.
    Dr. E. A. Schubert, Mr. Labaum's chief assistant, relieved him at Dayton, Ohio, and will continue the itinerary laid out, which takes them on through Ohio, then up into Michigan and back into northern Illinois where they will close about the first of May.  It is a well known fact that the western states have used this method of advertising their advantages for some time and are still using it aggressively to secure settlers and homesteaders in their respective territories.  They are taking hundreds and thousands of our southern people away from us every year and if we do not awaken to conditions that confront us and do something to offset or diminish this constant drain on our population we will be seriously handicapped in the development of our resources during the years to come.
*Name indistinct on microfilm.  The best interpretation is shown.
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Gordon Hamilton
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