Nashville Union And American

The Real Value of Real Estate,

To the Union and American:

When you note day after day in your daily newspaper that the leading mercantile, manufacturing, and railroad kings of the country are shaken to their centre, by the fluctuations of stocks and bonds, does not one name, well known in every State of our Union, readily occur to the observer as being absolutely invincible amid whatever mutations the "market" may experience? Need we name Wm. B. Astor, of New York, as a man above and beyond and superior to any "panic," attainable between our oceans? And why does he rank as entirely above suspicion when the Napoleons of reputed wealth are abdicating their thrones?

Simply because his wealth is known through all these years to consist in real, and not imaginary, estate. He is a landed man. Slow, yet sure as the foundation of the earth. We saw France but months ago, over-run and spoliated by the "schoolmaster" of Prussia, and burdened with milliards of debt, yet France is to-day relieved from the foreign war burden and ready for civil strife again. Now how can a nation stand the rub that France has, lately, and yet be great? Simply because the French are a landed people. Its soil is divided and sub-divided and owned by the aggregate population. They are tied by the supreme right of ownership in the realty of their country and own no other civil gods than their ownership in the soil of La Belle France.

Ownership of land by its people is the true basis of a nation's wealth and nowhere on earth do all the advantages of good government ally themselves with the fundaments of national prosperity—great nature's lap—in a more eminent degree than in Tennessee, and nowhere in Tennessee is there a more choice field than Nashville and its vicinity affords. Never in its history has Davidson county seen a better than to-day. It has a larger population of home-living sovereigns than ever before. It is more owned by its aggregate population, and its lands have therefore a true basis of substantial value. When banks are suspending, stocks tumbling, and all "quotations" are declining, we as a community are fortunate in being able to supply the very realty of wealth to every laborer, whether rich or poor, high or low. We have land for the landless. Come and be identified with us almost at any price.