“‘We thank you for your presence here to-day. We thank you for the magnificent exhibit which your System has placed upon these grounds. To you, one and all, Mr. President and gentlemen, we bid you welcome to Atlanta; all that she has is yours. We gladly turn it over to you.’” [Great and continued applause and cheering.] “Colonel Hemphill proposed three cheers for President Plant. The cheers were given. “Here the Innes Band gave a splendid rendition of the popular medley, ‘Plantation Echoes,’ including ‘Way Down Upon the Suwanee River,’ which, was loudly cheered. “Mr. Plant’s Address was as follows: “‘Mr. President of the Cotton States and International Exposition Company, and the Honorable Mayor of the city of Atlanta:--In behalf of my associates and employees of the Plant System, and friends, gentlemen and ladies, whom I see around me and before me, I scarcely know how to thank you for this glorious welcome, this grand reception. I can but say that we are here to witness a very magnificent Exposition, quite beyond any conception of mine, and, I believe, of any of the gentlemen who have come here with me to-day, to examine and make a study of this monument to the enterprise and energies of the good people of the city of Atlanta and of the State of Georgia. “‘When I was called upon in Jacksonville, Florida, in December, 1894, by a committee of gentlemen of the Exposition Company, and requested by them to make an exhibit here of interesting products from the country bordering our lines of roads in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, the four States that our rail lines traverse, I was backward to do so, for the reason that I feared we had nothing that would do credit to our line, our interests and our patrons; and had I known, sir, of the extent and the grandeur of this Exposition, I believe that I should have continued to hesitate. “‘It has been some years since I have visited Atlanta, and I was hardly prepared to see the growth, the tremendous growth, that I find has occurred in my absence. I see you are rapidly going forward; that you are becoming a metropolis. You represent, sir, the capital of one of the greatest States of the Union--the Empire State of the South. [Applause and cheers.] “‘You never need be backward to represent Atlanta; it appears to me that within a very short time, without saying anything to the detriment of any of the other cities in this country, that it will be called The City of the South. [Applause.] Other cities may advance, and do advance; many cities and many communities in the South advance rapidly; they advance in population and in wealth, but, sir, nothing have I seen in many years to admire like your city of Atlanta.