USA > Georgia > Fulton County > Atlanta > History of Atlanta, Georgia : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 15
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with Georg a than we ever were before, and have been ever since. [Applause.] From that day to this I have been completely and effectually cured. and if there is anybody here to-night that has th it fever, if it is not periodical, but comes on once in a lifetime, and he wants to go somewhere Ise, I want to address myself to him and tell him why it is that I found this coun- try so much more desirable than any other localities that I visited.
In the first place, I found a great many things in different countries better than we had here in this, but in all the requisites that make home comfortable, that makes it desirable to live, I found none that could begin to compare with this section of the country for a hundred miles around. In the first place, in that northwestern country, I found they had the extreme heat in the summer time, sometimes twenty degrees hotter than we have it here, and in the winter time sometimes as much as forty, or even sixty, degrees colder. I didn't want to move into a country like that. I found, in addition to that, they had, for miles and miles, treeless prairies, and it was no uncommon thing for a man to travel five hundred miles without seeing a tree. For a man that was raised in the woods, that was no country for me to live in.
I went on the Pacific coast, and I traveled that for a thousand miles, and I found in that country a temperature that did not vary at all. It was neither too hot in the summer or cold in the winter. They wore the sanie clothes the year around-the same suit, often. They slept under the same bed covering, and the water, while it was as pure and clear as crystal, tasted to me like you had put a teaspoonful of lye in it. That was the trouble there. Then it was six months of rain and six months of dry weather .. Now, you know how tired we get of a lit- tle rain for two weeks. Then, again, I found places where there were no mineral deposits at all, where they hauled coal in that northwestern country for thousands of miles, and I found it was no unusual thing to haul lumber 500 miles. I found that their crops had to be irrigated in the summer time, except wheat. I found they had wheat land that would make sixty or ninety bushels to the acre one out of every three years, but the other two they did not make more than we do here. Then I came back to Georgia, better satisfied than before, and I have had no desire since then to leave here.
There is not a man in this audience here to-night that can comprehend the possibilities o this country for forty miles around Cartersville. Think for a moment what you have. I am not going into any statistics. I am not going to make any statement but what you know to be true or what you can find out to be true. Think of your situation here now. North of you, say forty or fifty miles, you have got the richest gold fields outside of California, which was considered wonderful until that far distant country was developed as a gold mining district. Just below here, in Carroil and Haralson counties, that same vein crops out. Capital from New Orleans is developing that, and they have already spent over two hundred thousand dol- lars in developing that one mine. Now, this gold vein to which I refer, and all geologists will tell you it is true, runs through this country somewhere. I do not know where it is. It is not far from Cartersville. It is not far from here. It passes down north of east and south of west, and runs down through this country somewhere. What there is in that vein, what untold mil- lions of wealth is there, we do not know, because it is buried in the bowels of the earth. The day is coming when money will be used in developing this mining interest, when, instead of the surface mining we have had about Dahlonega and in Carroll and in Haralson counties. they will do like they do in California, go down fifteen hundred, two thousand and three thou- sand feet through tunnels. When they do that. how do you know but what they will discover gold and silver equal to the great Comstock lodes in the far West, where men have made grand fortunes by owning a single share in that stock. That is one of the remotest possibilities that you have around here. I only allude to it to let you know what there is in this country within a radius of forty miles of Cartersville.
In addition to that, look at your iron. I do not believe there is an audience in America that will believe what I say about your iron except a Cartersville audience. Applause. You know what it is. I have had occasion within the last fifteen months to take a circuit around
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the northern portion of this county, and I did not believe it until I saw it, that you had moun- tains of iron ore waiting, not to be mined. but simply to be blasted. 'There it stands. Fifty to ninety per cent. of solid iron. What is there in the ground ? I am told the further down you go the finer the quality is. Now, when you come around on the southern part of the county they tell me all these hills are filled.
I know it to be a fact that the iron men of Alabama are sending for this ore, because they know it is the purest ore they can get. I know the foundrymen of Chattanooga are sending for it to mix with their ores, for they say it makes a better metal. I know that Governor Brown, who owns the Rising Fawn furnace, tells me he makes a better quality of pig iron when he mixes Bartow iron with his red hematite. Do you know what has been done with your manganese ore ? Do you know it has been shipped to France, in great quantities? Do you know that they are delivering seven hundred and fifty tons to Pittsburgh, every month in the year? No, these are some of the things I said if I was to repeat in any other audience ex- cept your Cartersville audience, who are acquainted with the resources of Bartow county, I would not be believed. You know what the Hurricane Mountain is, and the Buford ore banks, and these other ore banks. You know what they are, and what they contain, and, fellow-citi- zens, you know what that great and good man did, who has passed away, in an age when iron was not used as it is now. I refer to that venerable old man, Hon. Mark A. Cooper. [Pro- longed applause. ] You know what he did toward developing this wealth. He merely took off the surface dirt, He did not disturb that underneath. He had nothing to do but shovel it up and throw it in the furnace. and make iron. That was in a time when iron wa . not used one- twentieth as much as it is now.
In speaking of iron we forget to consider the use to which iron is put in th -se days. You will hear a great many old fellows in this country say : " I have heard them talking about iron all my life, and I do not see any money in it." There is where you are mistaken. The time is coming when you will see iron used in the place of wood in almost everything - in the manu- facture of bridges, railroad ties, everything where you use wood now iron is coming in. Gen- eral Lawton told me, in giving an account of the transportation of the troops belonging to Longstreet's corps from Richmond to Chattanooga, that he investigated the track between these two points and that there was not a single iron bridge on that line. There was hut one railroad line between those places. The whole of the corps had to be moved in a certain num- ber of days. The burning or breaking of a single bridge would have ruined the move. Now. to-day between those places I have mentioned, not counting the various other lines that have been built between these points since. there is scarcely a wooden bridge, not only iron, but they are steel hridges, not only iron rails, but they are steel'rails, not weighing twenty-five or thirty pounds to the yard, but they weigh sixty to eighty, and they will increase them until they will make gigantic tracks that will hold engines twice as large as those used now. All this con- sumes iron, and if the Hon. Mark A. Cooper had lived and had the same energy and vim that he had when they destroyed his furnace, he would have lived to have realized all the hopes that he had planted upon the shores of the Etowah. ( Applause.]
Not only have you seen these rapid strides taken in the manufacture of iron, but they have made rapid strides in converting this ore into steel. You can all remember, and it has been only a few years back, too, when steel was considered a great rarity. When a man had an ax made, it was split open, and a little link of steel put in it. It was hard to get. The present process of making steel had not been discovered then, but the scientific men have gone on un- til they can make the pig iron that you turn out here and make the purest kind of steel by at simple process that only costs two or three dollars a ton. They have reduced it to such a science that it is cheaper for railroads to use it. It is used in large public buildings tor floor- ing and beams and rafters, for it is lighter to handle and stronger and more durable. All these things should go to the advantage of Birtow county.
In addition to what I say of your iron interests, I want to ask you where there is another
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section of the country for miles square, where a man can build and equip a house from the foundation to the dome, with all the entire finishings, and in as handsome a style as you can here in Cartersville or around it ? You have building material in the shape of stone ; you have every bit of iron that is necessary. You can tile it with the finest marble in the world. You can put up mantelpieces as fine as any in Italy. You can cover it with slate that cannot be beat in Europe or in any other country ; lime, cement, and everything that is necessary ahout the building of a house to live, you can find in easy reach of Cartersville. You can duplicate Vanderbilt's house in New York and not go out of Bartow county for material.
Now, in addition to all these things, where can you find a country that exceeds it in agri- cultural resources. I have been all over the United States, but I never saw a section of country like you have here in Bartow, where you can diversify your crops like you do here, I can see cotton growing three-quarters of a bale to the acre, hillside corn making seventy-five bushels to the acre, and wheat that will make twenty-five or thirty bushels. You know you have that in your land, and you know it is here. You can raise all kinds of fruits that are not raised in tropical climates, and all kinds of flowers that are not raised in tropical countries, and some that are. These are some of the agricultural advantages of this country. I do not ex- aggerate when I say to you that I do not believe there are forty miles square in the United . States that has such magnificent resources for a people to live in as I have described.
When I have talked about this to people, many of them in the north, and described this section of country, I have always been met hy one question, and that is this : " If all these things are there, as you say they are, why is it that those people do not utilize them ? Why. are they not the richest people in the United States? Now fellow citizens that is a question that staggers me. Here you are, surrounded with all these blessings that God has given to you, and you have let it lie in the ground buried, without improving it, without doing anything to make money for yourself or for your neighbors.
Now, I propose to talk to you plainly about it. There is but one way to get at it. There is no use to cover up anything, and I ask no favors from you. I am going to tell you the truth, and in a way not to offend you, but to let you understand what your duty is as citizens of such a country as this. This section of country is not behind other parts of the southern country in the development of great and good men. When I look back on the gallant soldiers of the Confederate army who went away from Georgia, I call to mind many of that number of as gallant men as were ever in a fight, coming from Bartow county. [ Applause.] I have heard them praised, not only by our own soldiers, but by Northern soldiers, men who met Watford's brigade, and remember them until this day. [Appliuse and laughter | And I have heard them speak of General Young and the men who went with him from Bartow county. [ Ap- plause.] I say to you that there never was a more gallant lot of people anywhere than these people. I have heard of your distinguished lawyers. I have heard of your distinguished physicians. I have heard of your distinguished preachers, whose reputations cover the whole country-but I have never yet heard of the man who has distinguished himself, with the excep- tion of Hon. Mark A. Cooper, in developing these resources that I call your attention to. And I say it shows a dereliction of duty on your part. You should take hold of these great re- sources that God has given you, and show the balance of the world that you have faith in them yourselves. Whenever the outside world finds out that you believe what you say about your country, when they find out that you are taking hold of it with vim and vigor, then you will see people flocking here, others trying to come, willing to come and wanting to come.
Now, what is the necessity of this ? you say. I will tell you the necessity of it. let's take up the farmers first. You make a bale of cotton. I will say you get fifty dollars for it. That is a high price, for you generally get less than that. You bring it to this town and sell it for fifty dollars. It costs you forty dollars to make that bal of cotton. It is put on the railroad and goes to Boston, or it goes to England, and it comes back to you people here. You have made it. It took forty dollars of your money to make it, and in less than six months
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it comes back in the shape of a bale of calico, and you pay about two hundred and fitty to five hundred dollars for it, and there was no more money expended in making it. Here is an in -. mense excess of profit. Who gets the profit on that ? You get from five to ten dollars profit. They get from $200 to $300. If you could spin that cotton right here into goods, and keep that money at home, how long would it be until the per capita of wealth of Bartow county would be equal to the per capita of wealth of any county in the United States. [Applause.] You spend forty dollars to make that bale of cotton, clearing five or ten dollars on it, and it goes to Boston or England and is turned into calico, and it brings this large sum out of your pocket, and the manual labor that is spent in converting that cotton into goods is not equal to the labor you spend in making it.
Now, let's take the iron. I suppose millions of dollars have been expended in digging manganese ore and iron ore in this county alone. It is shipped to Birmingham and to Chat- tanooga and to Pittsburgh, to France and England, and to different countries, where they utilize it. It comes back to you in plows, hoes, nails, screws, railroad iron, knives and a thousand and one things too tedious for me to mention. You get from two to four dollars a ton for it. Of course it does not net you that much. You are getting no richer. You say yourselves there is no money in it. It comes back here to you in the shape of railroad iron, which is sold to you for thirty dollars a ton, nails nearly a hundred dollars, in the shape of spades and axes nearly two hundred dollars a ton, and in the shape of knives, scissors and razors it is sold to you at from eight hundred to a thousand dollars a ton, and in watch springs-well, I won't venture to say. I would not be surprised, if all the watches in this audience here to-night could speak, you would hear some spring say, " I came from Bartow county." [ Applause.] In watch- springs alone they make hundreds of dollars per ton. Think of it. What is the difference be- tween this manganese ore and this gray metal you send out. You can take a lump not bigger than an egg that will make a hundred of them. What is the difference? Why, it is labor. Nothing but labor. My God, you have more of that than anything else I know of. [Ap- plause.] I know there is plenty here. There is plenty where I came from, plenty of good men who want work, plenty of good men willing to work, and plenty of good women willing to work, and can work at all these things I speak about.
You have to understand that this iron you take from here, the process through which it has to go, is a process that can be learned by every man in this house in less than a year, if he has any mechanical skill about him at all. He has to understand how to temper it. It is first made into steel, and then rolled out to the proper size and a watch spring is made, and all you have to do is to cut it off.
I was up at Newport about three summers ago, and being out with a friend one day, I saw a little fellow driving a beautiful span of horses, wearing fine clothes with beaver hat on and crape band around the hat about two inches wide, a pair of kid gloves, with a finely dressed woman by his side. I thought he was Jay Gould or Vanderbilt or some other big man. I was pretty green, and I said to my friend : " What distinguished gentleman is that in the carriage ?" I thought he was going to name a big hanker or some big official, and he replied : " That is a little fellow up here in Massachusetts that makes hairpins. [ Laughter.] I said : "Can a man drive a span of horses like that and dress like he does and make hairpins?" and my friend told me that he had made a hundred thousand dollars. This gentleman knew him personally, and he said, " Let me give you a history of that man," and he went on to tell me that he was a poor mechanic, and he invented a little simple machine, and he started to making these hair- pins, and that the lady with him was his wife, and helped him to make the boxes. He kept on until he had a little house about fifty feet square, with a dozen machines making different size hairpins. He bought his steel wire by the wholesale, and had nothing to do hut to collect his money.
Well, I had hardly gotten over that until another fellow come along driving an equally fine pair of horses, and my friend said to me, " You see that man ?" I said, " Yes." " Well," said
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he, " that man has made a fortune making fish hooks." And he went on to tell how he man- aged it. He didn't do anything but buy the steel wire of different sizes, and he had invented him a little machine that would cut them off at the right length, make the hook and the beard and the rough edge, and he had it all fixed so that he had nothing to do but to box them up and sell them.
That is where those people get ahead of us. They have their button factories, and their fish-hook factories, and their hair-pin factories, and a thousand and one of other factories, and all of them possibilities to the people of this county if they will go at it in the proper way. I am not drawing you any fancy picture at all. You cannot go into any avocation of life but what you have to use something that you can make in Bartow county, and cheaper than any- where else in the world. [Applause.] The ministers of the gospel have to use what you can make here. Lawyers, doctors, merchants, farmers and everybody else, but loafers, use what you can make here.
Now, fellow-citizens, this should not be as it is. You have got to start you a furnace. When I hear these people talking about what they have done or what they are doing, and when I see you ladie. out here to-night, and see you determined men. I find that you are he- ginning to realize that you have to take hold of this yourselves, and, instead of praying to Jupi- ter, you are going to put your shoulders to the wheel. Now, you have to raise this money for the furnace first. You will have to use some of this ore, and only ship the surplus. Turn it first into pig iron, and, when you do that, you will find some Yankee from Boston or New England or Ohio who will examine very critically the quality of that pig iron. The first thing you know he will say it is a peculiar kind of iron - I'm not going to tell you what it is because I don't know. I am not going to use any five dollar words to you, because I am not posted on iron. But he will tell you it is the best iron adapted to his business in the world. I have heard others talking that way about Bartow county iron. They wouldn't send it to Chat- tanooga, Birmingham and Pittsburg if it wasn't. He will say : "I believe I will put me up a little stove foundry here and make stoves out of it," and he will bring a lot of workmen here to work that iron into stoves, and you will have a direct revenue from your iron, and instead of getting from two to four dollars a ton you will get twenty or thirty, or maybe forty or fifty dol- lars, owing to the quality of ore that Yankee gets, and I'll bet he gets the best in Bartow. You will have to go to work and study up the various schemes. You will have to have a steel plant in this county, not a larger one than anybody else, but you will have to build one that you may start up without losing money at first. And you have to convert that, by a mix- ture of different ores, into the finest steel that can be made. Make that the desideratum - that you will make the finest steel. When you do that some fellow will come down here with a rolling-mill, because he cannot get it anywhere else like he can here. You can bring him coke and coal, and bring him charcoal just as cheap as they get it in Birmingham, dollar for dollar, and, with the roads you already have, without a single one to build when you have these things here, you need not subscribe any money for railroads, for they will come. They will always go where they can be paid to go. And when you get that rolling-mill to work all you have to do will be to change rollers. That is all. The same machinery with a change of rollers will roll a hairpin or a railroad bar.
One rolling mill will do wonders for your town. It will start all these little industries that go to make a country wealthy. It will start up that hairpin man and that fish-hook man and the horseshoe man and your wagon tire man and the plow-man and everything where iron can be used, and you need not put another dollar into it. They will come. They will come where they can make money. That is what they come for.
But you tell a man to come down here and put up a furnace, and he will say : " Why don't you do it ?" He does not know anything about what you tell him. Half of them believe you are lying to them if you tell them what you have. I didn't believe it myself until I came here and saw it. This is the God's truth. But when you back your faith with your money, it is as
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much as to say : " I'll bet you so much it is there," and when you begin to roll out the iron on- him he will begin to investigate the quality of the iron, and he will then say : " That is all right," and he will put up these things that I have told you about, and when you get all these things to going you will have to pass a law to keep them out of Bartow county. You will have to keep them out, for they will crowd you so. They will come from every part of the world, for you have the best county in the world to live in. [Applause.]
"Now, how is it going to benefit me?" says the farmer. "I do not know that I care to sell any of my ore : if it advances as you say it will. all I have to do is to leave it to my chil- dren." That is what you have said for forty years. Your children have turned out to be law- yers and doctors, but none have turned their attention to that. You will have to teach your boys to take hold of these things. Make hairpin men out of them, if nothing else.
This thing of making money is a serious question. The Bible does not say that money is the root of all evil. It is necessary to every man in this workl. The Bible says that it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. When you worship money more than your God then it is an evil, but the good book says, "Be ye diligent in business, serving the Lord." [Laugh- ter.] Get all you can honestly, for it does a great deal of good even to a Christian gentleman. [Laughter and applause]. I think the most God-forsaken man that I know of and entirely out of hope is the man that is not able to make any money, and does not know how to make it. It makes rogues and bad men, and God Almighty never intended that you should be in that fix. You cannot understand all that He has done. He does a great many things we do not understand, and sometimes I do not try to understand what He does
You may take an acre of grass out here and turn a lot of sheep on it, and let them eat that grass, and it makes wool. You turn a horse on that and it makes horse hair and horse, and turn a goose on that and it makes goose and feathers, and a duck, and it makes duck and feathers. [Laughter.] I am not smart enough to explain how it is, but God intended it for us, and you have to provide your grass, and then you have to turn your geese and your ducks and your sheep and your horses and hogs upon it, and then you will have done your duty. It is your duty to profit by the possessions of these lands of yours. It is your inheritance. It he- longs to you, and it is just as necessary for your comfort and your temporal welfare to look after these things and be decent and good people as for you to be common, ordinary citizens of Bartow county. There is no trouble about it. It requires a little ingenuity and a little labor. You will have to come together and talk this thing over. If you cannot start a fifty-ton fur- nace take a forty-ton, and if you cannot get that take a twenty-ton, and if you cannot go that take a ten-ton. You have to raise the money yourselves, and when you have started that go on until you get these other things. You may be able to stop there, but I do not think you will, before it begins to pay. But when you do begin to go into these things and begin to build up, I will tell you, fellow-citizens, that you will be so completely gratified at the change that has been made in this grand old country that you will never stop your energies in the de- velopment of all that God has given you to develop. I say this is a part of your domain. It has been entrusted to you all, rich and poor. You must scratch the dirt off of it and show it. You have to show it to the world by the manufacture of these articles I have mentioned and sending them to the uttermost parts of the globe. Take these boys who want to earn wages and give them these opportunities by the manufacture of these different articles.
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