Second Blooming

When the Florida real estate boom collapsed, Florida went on short rations for seven years. Last week Florida made a gesture to help out other states also on short rations. That the jobless of northern states might have vitamins for breakfast, the Florida Citrus Control Committee agreed to donate 11,000 bushels of oranges per day to unemployment, provided Federal Surplus Relief Corp. would pay packing and shipping costs. Well might Florida make this gesture, for last week she felt that her seven lean years were over.

For more than three weeks Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Air Line have been running two to five sections of their track trains to Florida. Eastern Air Transport was carrying twice as many passengers south as in 1933. In two weeks 63,000 passenger automobiles from other states poured into Miami. One day last week while blizzards were freezing the North 75,000 people baked on Miami Beach, three times the peak number reported in 1926. There, too, 45,000 visitors filled all available accommodations. In Tampa Barren Collier's hotels, Floridan and Tampa Terrace, were 85% full, reopened their main dining rooms closed all last year. Visitors were warned not to go to Palm Beach and Miami unless they had reservations. The best hotels, all full, were charging $15 to $40 a day.

Sports events did booming business. Dog tracks at Miami were crowded every night. The thoroughbreds and oleanders were in full bloom at Joe Widener's Hialeah Park where pari-mutuel betting was averaging $250,000 a day. With little more than half the Hialeah racing season completed the State of Florida had already collected over $200,000 in taxes on betting and admissions--$50,000 more than last year. Crowds swarmed to Henry L. Doherty's Miami-Biltmore horseshow at Tropical Park to see an Army jumping team from Fort Riley beat Forts Myer, Sill, Benning, McPherson and Oglethorpe. In a Miami store window a pair of Primo Camera's giant clodhoppers stood filled with pennies--offering a pair of free tickets to this week's Camera-Tommy Loughran championship fight to whoever guessed most accurately their contents.

Floridians were overjoyed. An unusually cold winter in the North, political unrest that had kept people from making their usual visit to Cuba, a dollar devaluation that had made the Riviera too expensive all contributed to this second blooming. Other signs of prosperity:

Every night club in Miami was jammed and their patrons were again plastered with jewels. School attendance jumped 30%.

In Palm Beach Mrs. A. Atwater Kent gave a luncheon for 90, Mrs. E. T. Stotesbury a dinner for 175, and a concert by the Romany Chorus packed its house with 500 auditors at $10 a head.

In St. Petersburg gas, electric and telephone companies were doing a 40% bigger business than in 1933 and automobile sales were up 60%.

In Tampa merchants reported business had increased 75% to 150%.

The Garden Clubs of America, arriving to attend the Palm Beach Club's annual flower show, were met by "the largest fleet of wheel chairs ever assembled" and trundled off to the conservatory of the Royal Poinciana Hotel, which had been remodeled to resemble the Piazza di Spagna in Rome. Palm Beach alone boasted the presence during the past fortnight of over 100 titled Europeans, including Major General the Earl of Athlone & the Countess of Athlone, Grand Duke Dmitri, Princess Anna Ilynski, Lord Forteviot and Baron & Baroness de Gunzbourg of Paris.

But what made Florida's pulse beat fastest was the fact that real estate transactions had tripled since 1933 and for the first time since 1926 there was a real demand for acreage.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.