Atlanta And Its Builders, Vol. 2 - A Comprehensive History Of The Gate City Of The South. Thomas H. Martin
city. With all her impetuous commercialism, her heart is in the right place. The city is the seat of several noble institutions of philanthropy and benevolence, prominent among them the Georgia Soldiers' Home. This worthy charity (and the word does not sound right in such a connection) recently suffered a sad blow from fire, the building being . entirely consumed; but a new and more beautiful soldiers' home is to be built at once.
There is a probability of a United States subtreasury being established in Atlanta, and of a magnificent new federal building being erected here.
Atlanta is practically, and nearly geographically, the center of the most richly endowed area of territory — in natural resources — of any in the world of equal compactness and limited extent.
Twenty-four hours' ride by rail from and back to Atlanta will take one through and around long leaf pine forests of standing timber estimated to contain more than 30,000,000 feet of the best yellow pine lumber in the world.
Twenty-four hours' ride by rail from and back to Atlanta will take one through and around tens of thousands of square miles of the best hard wood timber in the Union, and the only area of any considerable extent in the United States.
Less than twenty-four hours' ride by rail from and back to Atlanta will take one through and around ten thousand square miles of coal fields the quality of whose product cannot be excelled.
Twelve hours' ride by rail from and back to Atlanta will take one through and around an area of minerals (precious and nonprecious) and gems, which for variety and abundance cannot be excelled in the same space.
Two hours' ride by rail from and back to Atlanta will take one to a mountain deposit of granite of unsurpassed strength, showing more than 10,000,000,000 cubic feet above the surface.
Six hours' ride by rail from and back to Atlanta will take one over deposits of marble covering hundreds of square miles of unknown depth, of all shades, and of unexcelled beauty and quality.
Twelve hours' ride by rail from and back to Atlanta will take one through and around water powers (in Georgia), of large volume and constant flow — unchecked by drouths and freezes — of sufficient power to manufacture all the cotton made in the United States.
Atlanta is nearly 1,100 feet above ocean level — the highest point (save one) in the United States, of equal population, and railway and other facilities.
Atlanta is absolutely exempt from miasmatic influence, exhalations and malarial influences.
Atlanta has unsurpassed natural drainage. Atlanta cannot be surpassed on the globe for salubrity of climate and healthfulness.
Atlanta can carry full lines of every description of merchandise, and transact business uninterruptedly the year round.
Atlanta's facilities for communication with the world, by steam and electricity, equal those of any other city.
Atlanta has a water supply ample, at the present rate of consumption, for a population of 50,000,000 people. Atlanta has a paid fire department not surpassed (if equaled) in the Union.
Take four strings and stretch them thus: Place one end of the first at Richmond, Va., and the other end at New Orleans, La.; one end of the second at Cincinnati, O., and the other end at Apalachicola, Fla.; one end of the third at Chicago, Ill., and the other at Tampa, Fla.; one end of the fourth at St. Louis, Mo., and the other at Brunswick, Ga., and it will be found that they all cross each other at Atlanta.
Take three other strings and stretch one from New York to New Orleans — it will pass very near Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, and a few miles west of Atlanta; another stretched from Charleston, S. C, to Memphis, Tenn., passes just north of Atlanta; and the third, stretched from St. Louis to Jacksonville, passes a few miles south of Atlanta.
A circle describing a radius of four hundred miles will include within it Wilmington and Raleigh, N. C, Danville and Lynchburg, Va., Charleston, W. Va., Cincinnati, O.. Louisville, Ky., Evansville, Ind., Cairo, Ill., Memphis, Tenn., New Orleans, La., and Tampa, Fla.
No better indication of the growth and enterprise of Atlanta could be desired than is reflected in phenomenal strides of The Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company.
A little more than two decades ago — in the days when the hopes of the South were centered in the prospects of Tilden and Hendricks — the telephone had its birth. It was exhibited first as a scientific toy at the Philadelphia Centennial, and the feat of being enabled to talk electrically from one end of Mechanics Hall to the other, went round the world like a flash and was written upon the honor roll of time as one of the new wonders of the new world. The toy of 1876 was not long in finding its application. Within two years telephone exchanges, with subscribers running into the hundreds, began to spring up in all the commercial centers. Telephony was a fact, though a feeble fact at that time. Among the first cities to secure the benefits of the telephone was Atlanta, and we find here in 1879 an exchange, in one of the upper rooms of the old Kimball House, with fifty-five subscribers! Today Atlanta boasts of one of the best equipped and up to date telephone systems in the world, with a telephone to every twenty people of her population.
Of all the industries for which America has become famous, none have had such phenomenal development as the arts of applied electricity, and of the electrical arts, the art of telephony has by far outstripped its compeers both in point of development and financial investment. As a result of which one may talk today from Atlanta to any point within a radius of one thousand miles with far more ease and satisfaction than was possible from one block to another fifteen years ago.
For this Atlanta owes much to the Southern Bell Telephone and Telephone Company and its progressive management, whose territory covers the South Atlantic States below Pennsylvania, and whose general headquarters have recently been removed from New York to this city, where their various departments are located in their large and elegantly appointed building on the corner of South Pryor and Mitchell streets.
During the past six years this company has devoted its best efforts to the establishment of a long distance system connecting together all of its various exchanges, and has today more than twelve thousand miles of wire in operation, and lines under construction which will bring the mileage near the fifteen thousand mile mark before the end of the present year. The Southern Bell adheres to the very highest standard of construction and equipment, using only pure copper wire in their long-distance construction, which ranges from three to five hundred dollars per mile of pole line, varying with the conditions of the country to be traversed.
In addition to the General Offices and Exchange on South Pryor street, the company have a factory on East Mitchell street, where about one hundred men are employed, and branch exchanges in Decatur, East Point, and North Atlanta operating into the main exchange:
The officials of the company are:
Edward J. Hall, president, New York City.
James Merrihew, vice-president, New York City.
D. I. Carson, secretary and treasurer, New York City.
W. T. Gentry, general manager, Atlanta.
J. W. Gibson, auditor, New York City.
T. I-. Ingram, general superintendent construction, Atlanta.
E. H. Bangs, electrical engineer, Atlanta. W. H. Adkins, traffic agent, Atlanta.
C. H. Connoley, supply agent, Atlanta.
John D. Easterlin, special agent, Atlanta.
M. O. Jackson, special agent, Atlanta.
D. M. Therrell, wire chief, Atlanta. J. C. Gentry, special agent, Atlanta.
H. W. Burton, jr., manager Atlanta Exchange, Atlanta.
Each of the above officials and heads of departments have under their direction from scores to hundreds of employees, barring, of course, the general manager, who has direct executive control of the administrative affairs of the company.
In addition to