There are many features and incidents in Mr. Grady’s life that cannot be
properly treated in this hurriedly written and altogether inadequate
sketch. His versatility was such that it would be difficult, even in a
deliberately written biography, to deal with its manifestations and
results as they deserve to be dealt with. At the North, the cry is, who
shall take his place as a peacemaker? At the South, who shall take his
place as a leader, as an orator, and as a peacemaker? In Atlanta, who
shall take his place as all of these, and as a builder-up of our
interests, our enterprises, and our industries! Who is to make for us
the happy and timely suggestion? Who is to speak the right word at the
right time! The loss the country has sustained in Mr. Grady’s death can
only be measurably estimated when we examine one by one the manifold
relations he bore to the people.
I have spoken of the power of organization that he possessed. There is
hardly a public enterprise in Georgia or in Atlanta—begun and completed
since 1880—that does not bear witness to his ability, his energy, and
his unselfishness. His busy brain and prompt hand were behind the great
cotton exposition held in Atlanta in 1881. Late in the spring of 1887,
one of the editorial writers of the _Constitution_ remarked that the
next fair held in Atlanta should be called the Piedmont Exposition.
“That shall be its name,” said Mr. Grady, “and it will be held this
fall.” That was the origin of the Piedmont Exposition. Within a month
the exposition company had been organized, the land bought, and work on
the grounds begun. It seemed to be a hopeless undertaking—there was so
much to be done, and so little time to do it in. But Mr, Grady was equal
to the emergency. He so infused the town with his own energy and
enthusiasm that every citizen came to regard the exposition as a
personal matter, and the _Constitution_ hammered away at it with
characteristic iteration. There was not a detail of the great show from
beginning to end that was not of Mr. Grady’s suggestion. When it seemed
to him that he was taking too prominent a part in the management, he
would send for other members of the fair committee, pour his suggestions
into their ears, and thus evade the notoriety of introducing them
himself and prevent the possible friction that might be caused if he
made himself too prominent. He understood human nature perfectly, and
knew how to manage men.
The exposition was organized and the grounds made ready in an incredibly
short time, and the fair was the most successful in every respect that
has ever been held in the South. Its attractions, which were all
suggested by Mr. Grady, appealed either to the interest or the curiosity
of the people, and the result was something wonderful. It is to be very
much doubted whether any one in this country, in time of peace, has seen
an assemblage of such vast and overwhelming proportions as that which
gathered in Atlanta on the principal day of the fair. Two years later,
the Piedmont Exposition was reorganized, and Mr. Grady once more had
practical charge of all the details. The result was an exhibition quite
as attractive as the first, to which the people responded as promptly as
before. The Exposition Company cleared something over $20,000, a result
unprecedented in the history of Southern fairs.
In the interval of the two fairs, Mr. Grady organized the Piedmont
Chautauqua at a little station on the Georgia Pacific road, twenty miles
from Atlanta. Beautiful grounds were laid out and commodious buildings
put up. In all this work Mr. Grady took the most profound interest. The
intellectual and educational features of such an institution appealed
strongly to his tastes and sympathies, and to that active missionary
spirit which impelled him to be continually on the alert in behalf of
humanity. He expended a good deal of energy on the Chautauqua and on the
programme of exercises, but the people did not respond heartily, and the
session was not a financial success. And yet there never was a
Chautauqua assembly that had a richer and a more popular programme of
exercises. The conception was a success intellectually, and it will
finally grow into a success in other directions. Mr. Grady, with his
usual unselfishness, insisted on bearing the expenses of the lecturers
and others, though it crippled him financially to do so. He desired to
protect the capitalists who went into the enterprise on his account,
and, as is usual in such cases, the capitalists were perfectly willing
to be protected. Mr. Grady was of the opinion that his experience with
the Chautauqua business gave him a deeper and a richer knowledge of
human nature than he had ever had before.
One morning Mr. Grady saw in a New York newspaper that a gentleman from
Texas was in that city making a somewhat unsuccessful effort to raise
funds for a Confederate veterans’ home. The comments of the newspaper
were not wholly unfriendly, but something in their tone stirred Mr.
Grady’s blood. “I will show them,” he said, “what can be done in
Georgia,” and with that he turned to his stenographer and dictated a
double-leaded editorial that stirred the State from one end to the
other. He followed it up the next day, and immediately subscriptions
began to flow in. He never suffered interest in the project to flag
until sufficient funds for a comfortable home for the Confederate
veterans had been raised.
Previously, he had organized a movement for putting up a building for
the Young Men’s Christian Association, and that building now stands a
monument to his earnestness and unselfishness. Years ago, shortly after
he came to Atlanta, he took hold of the Young Men’s Library, which was
in a languishing condition, and put it on its feet. It was hard work,
for he was comparatively unknown then. Among other things, he organized
a lecture course for the benefit of the library, and he brought some
distinguished lecturers to Atlanta—among others the late S. S. Cox. Mr.
Cox telegraphed from New York that he would come to Atlanta, and also
the subject of the lecture, so that it could be properly advertised. The
telegram said that the title of the lecture was “Just Human,” and large
posters, bearing that title, were placed on the bill-boards and
distributed around town. As Mr. Grady said, “the town broke into a
profuse perspiration of placards bearing the strange device, while
wrinkles gathered on the brow of the public intellect and knotted
themselves hopelessly as it pondered over what might be the elucidation
of such a strangely-named subject. At last,” Mr. Grady goes on to say,
“the lecturer came, and a pleasant little gentleman he was, who beguiled
the walk to the hotel with the airiest of jokes and the brightest of
comment. At length, when he had registered his name in the untutored
chirography of the great, he took me to one side, and asked in an
undertone what those placards meant.”
“That,” I replied, looking at him in astonishment, “is the subject of
your lecture.”
“‘My lecture!’ he shrieked, ‘whose lecture? What lecture? My subject!
Whose subject? Why, sir,’ said he, trying to control himself, ‘my
subject is ‘Irish Humor,’ while this is ‘Just Human,’ and he put on his
spectacles and glared into space as if he were determined to wring from
that source some solution of this cruel joke.”
By an error of transmission, “Irish Humor” had become “Just Human.” Mr.
Grady does not relate the sequel, but what followed was as
characteristic of him as anything in his unique career.
“Well,” said he, turning to Mr. Cox, his bright eyes full of laughter,
“you stick to your subject, and I’ll take this ready-made one; you
lecture on ‘Irish Humor’ and I’ll lecture on ‘Just Human.’”
And he did. He took the telegraphic error for a subject, and delivered
in Atlanta one of the most beautiful lectures ever heard here. There was
humor in it and laughter, but he handled his theme with such grace and
tenderness that the vast audience that sat entranced under his magnetic
oratory went home in tears.
The lecture course that Mr. Grady instituted was never followed up,
although it was a successful one. It was his way, when he had organized
an enterprise and placed it on its feet, to turn his attention to
something else. Sometimes his successors were equal to the emergency,
and sometimes they were not. The Young Men’s Library has been in good
hands, and it is what may be termed a successful institution, but it is
not what it was when Mr. Grady was booming the town in its behalf. When
he put his hand to any enterprise or to any movement the effect seemed
to be magical. It was not his personal influence, for there were some
enterprises beyond the range of that, that responded promptly to his
touch. It was not his enthusiasm, for there have been thousands of men
quite as enthusiastic. Was it his methods? Perhaps the secret lies
hidden there; but I have often thought, while witnessing the results he
brought about, that he had at his command some new element, or quality,
or gift not vouchsafed to other men. Whatever it was, he employed it
only for the good of his city, his State, his section, and his country.
His patriotism was as prominent and as permanent as his unselfishness.
His public spirit was unbounded, and, above all things, restless and
eager.
I have mentioned only a few of the more important enterprises in Atlanta
that owe their success to Mr. Grady. He was identified with every public
movement that took shape in Atlanta, and the people were always sure
that his interest and his influence were on the side of honesty and
justice. But his energies took a wider range. He was the very embodiment
of the spirit that he aptly named “the New South,”—the New South that,
reverently remembering and emulating the virtues of the old, and
striving to forget the bitterness of the past, turns its face to the
future and seeks to adapt itself to the conditions with which an
unsuccessful struggle has environed it, and to turn them to its profit.
Of the New South Mr. Grady was the prophet, if not the pioneer. He was
never tired of preaching about the rehabilitation of his section. Much
of the marvelous development that has taken place in the South during
the past ten years has been due to his eager and persistent efforts to
call the attention of the world to her vast resources. In his newspaper,
in his speeches, in his contributions to Northern periodicals, this was
his theme. No industry was too small to command his attention and his
aid, and none were larger than his expectations. His was the pen that
first drew attention to the iron fields of Alabama, and to the wonderful
marble beds and mineral wealth of Georgia. Other writers had preceded
him, perhaps, but it is due to his unique methods of advertising that
the material resources of the two States are in their present stage of
development. He had no individual interest in the development of the
material wealth of the South. During the past ten years there was not a
day when he was alive that he could not have made thousands of dollars
by placing his pen at the disposal of men interested in speculative
schemes. He had hundreds of opportunities to write himself rich, but he
never fell below the high level of unselfishness that marked his career
as boy and man.
There was no limit to his interest in Southern development. The
development of the hidden wealth of the hills and valleys, while it
appealed strongly to an imagination that had its practical and
common-sense side, but not more strongly than the desperate struggle of
the farmers of the South in their efforts to recover from the disastrous
results of the war while facing new problems of labor and conditions
wholly strange. Mr. Grady gave them the encouragement of his voice and
pen, striving to teach them the lessons of hope and patience. He was
something more than an optimist. He was the embodiment, the very
essence, as it seemed—of that smiling faith in the future that brings
happiness and contentment, and he had the faculty of imparting his faith
to other people. For him the sun was always shining, and he tried to
make it shine for other men. At one period, when the farmers of Georgia
seemed to be in despair, and while there was a notable movement from
this State to Georgia, Mr. Grady caused the correspondents of the
_Constitution_ to make an investigation into the agricultural situation
in Georgia. The result was highly gratifying in every respect. The
correspondents did their work well, as, indeed, they could hardly fail
to do under the instructions of Mr. Grady. The farmers who had been
despondent took heart, and from that time to the present there has been
a steady improvement in the status of agriculture in Georgia.
It would be difficult to describe or to give an adequate idea of the
work—remarkable in its extent as well as in its character—that Mr. Grady
did for Georgia and for the South. It was his keen and hopeful eyes that
first saw the fortunes that were to be made in Florida oranges. He wrote
for the _Constitution_ in 1877 a series of glowing letters that were
full of predictions and figures based on them. The matter was so new at
that time, and Mr. Grady’s predictions and estimates seemed to be so
extravagant, that some of the editors, irritated by his optimism, as
well as by his success as a journalist, alluded to his figures as
“Grady’s facts,” and this expression had quite a vogue, even among those
who were not unfriendly.
Nevertheless there is not a prediction to be found in Mr. Grady’s
Florida letters that has not been fulfilled, and his figures appear to
be tame enough when compared with the real results that have been
brought about by the orange-growers. Long afterwards he alluded publicly
to “Grady’s facts,” accepted its application, and said he was proud that
his facts always turned out to be facts.
It would be impossible to enumerate the practical subjects with which
Mr. Grady dealt in the _Constitution_. In the editorial rooms he was
continually suggesting the exhaustive treatment of some matter of real
public interest, and in the majority of instances, after making the
suggestion to one of his writers, he would treat the subject himself in
his own inimitable style. His pleasure trips were often itineraries in
behalf of the section he was visiting. He went on a pleasure trip to
Southern Georgia on one occasion, and here are the headlines of a few of
the letters he sent back: “Berries and Politics,” “The Savings of the
Georgia Farmers,” “The Largest Strawberry Farm in the State,” “A
Wandering Bee, and How it Made the LeConte Pear,” “The Turpentine
Industries.” All these are suggestive. Each letter bore some definite
relation to the development of the resources of the State.
To Mr. Grady, more than to any other man, is due the development of the
truck gardens and watermelon farms of southern and southwest Georgia.
When he advised in the _Constitution_ the planting of watermelons for
shipment to the North, the proposition was hooted at by some of the
rival editors, but he “boomed” the business, as the phrase is, and
to-day the watermelon business is an established industry, and thousands
of farmers are making money during what would otherwise be a dull season
of the year. And so with hundreds of other things. His suggestions were
always practicable, though they were sometimes so unique as to invite
the criticism of the thoughtless, and they were always for the benefit
of others—for the benefit of the people. How few men, even though they
live to a ripe old age, leave behind them such a record of usefulness
and unselfish devotion as that of this man, who died before his prime!