Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
History
Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
Grady, Henry Woodfin, 1850-1889
subscribed, in lots of $1,000,000 and upward, for the purchase and
development of Southern railroads and mining properties; the total will
probably run to $120,000,000. There is now being expended in the
building of new railroads from Atlanta, Georgia, as headquarters,
$17,800,000, not one dollar of which was subscribed by Georgians or by
the State of Georgia. The men who invest these vast amounts in the South
are interested in the general development of the section into which they
have gone with their enterprise, and they readily double any local
subscription for any legitimate local improvement. By the sale of these
railroad properties to Northern syndicates at advanced prices the local
stockholders have realized heavily in cash, and this surplus is seeking
manufacturing investment. The prospect is that the next ten years will
witness a growth in this direction beyond what even the most sanguine
predict.
The International Cotton Exposition, opening October 5, of the present
year, in Atlanta, must have a tremendous influence in improving the
culture, handling, and manufacture of the great staple of the South. The
Southern people do not lack the desire to keep abreast with improvement
and invention, but on the contrary have shown precipitate eagerness in
reaching out for the best and newest. Before the war, when the Southern
planter had a little surplus money he bought a slave. Since the war, he
buys a piece of machinery. The trouble has been that he was forced to
buy without any guide as to the value of what he bought, or its
adaptability to the purposes for which he intended it. The consequence
is that the farms are littered with ill-adapted and inferior implements
and machines, representing twice the investment that, intelligently
placed, would provide an equipment that with half the labor would do
better work. It is the purpose of the exposition to bring the farmers
face to face with the very best machinery that invention and experience
have produced. The buildings themselves will be models each of its kind,
and will represent the judgment of experts as to cheapness, durability,
safety and general excellence. The past and present will be contrasted
in the exhibition. The old loom on which the rude fabrics of our
forefathers were woven by hands gentle and loving will be put against
the more elaborate looms of to-day. The spinning wheel of the past, that
filled all the country-side with its drowsy music, as the dusky spinner
advanced and retreated, with not ungraceful courtesy and a swinging
sidewise shuffle, will find its sweet voice lost in the hum of modern
spindles. The cycle of gins and ginning will be there completed,
invention coming back, after a half-century of trial with the brutal
saw, to a perfected variation of the patient and gentle roller with
which the precious fleece was pulled from the seed years upon years ago.
There are the most wonderful machines promised, including a half-dozen
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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