ALIVE ATLANTA
An army officer, a man of broad sympathies, familiar with the whole
United States, warned me before I went south that I must not judge the
South by northern standards.
"On the side of picturesqueness and charm," he said, "the South can more
than hold its own against the rest of the country; likewise on the side
of office-holding and flowery oratory; but you must not expect southern
cities to have the energy you are accustomed to in the North."
As to the picturesqueness, charm, officeholding, and oratory, I found
his judgments substantially correct, but though I did perceive a certain
lack of energy in some small cities, I should not call that trait a
leading one in the larger southern cities to-day. On the contrary, I was
impressed, in almost every large center that I visited, with the fact
that, in the South more, perhaps, than in any other part of the country,
a great awakening is in progress. The dormant period of the South is
past, and all manner of developments are everywhere in progress. Nor do
I know of any city which better exemplifies southern growth and progress
than Atlanta.
My Baedeker, dated 1909, opens its description of Atlanta with the
statement that the German consul there is Dr. E. Zoepffel. I doubt
it--but let us pass over that. It describes Atlanta as "a prosperous
commercial and industrial city and an important railroad center, well
situated, 1030-1175 feet above the sea, enjoying a healthy and bracing
climate." That is true. Atlanta is, if I mistake not, the highest
important city east of Denver, and I believe her climate is in part
responsible for her energy, as it is also for the fact that her
vegetation is more like that of a northern than a southern city, elms
and maples rather than magnolias, being the trees of the Atlanta
streets.
Baedeker gave Atlanta about 90,000 inhabitants in 1909, but the census
of 1910 jumped her up to more than 150,000, while the estimate of 1917
in the "World Almanac" credits her with about 180,000. Moreover, in the
almanac's list of the largest cities of the earth, Atlanta comes
twentieth from the top. It is my duty, perhaps, to add that the list is
arranged alphabetically--which reminds me that some cynic has suggested
that there may have been an alphabetical arrangement of names, also, in
the celebrated list in which Abou Ben Adhem's "name led all the rest."
Nevertheless, it may be stated that, according to the almanac's
population figures, Atlanta is larger than the much more ancient city of
Athens (I refer to Athens, Greece; not Athens, Georgia), as well as such
considerable cities as Bari, Bochum, Graz, Kokand, and Omsk. Atlanta is,
in short, a city of about the size of Goteborg, and if she has not yet
achieved the dimensions of Baku, Belem, Changsha, Tashkent, or West Ham,
she is growing rapidly, and may some day surpass them all; yes, and even
that thriving metropolis, Yekaterinoslav.
As to the "healthy and bracing climate," I know that Atlanta is cool and
lovely in the spring, and I am told that her prosperous families do not
make it a practice to absent themselves from home during the summer,
according to the custom of the corresponding class in many other cities,
northern as well as southern.
Atlanta is one of the few large inland cities located neither upon a
river nor a lake. When the city was founded, the customs of life in
Georgia were such that no one ever dreamed that the State might some day
go dry. Having plenty of other things to drink, the early settlers gave
no thought to water. But, as time went on, and prohibition became a more
and more important issue, the citizens of Atlanta began to perceive
that, in emergency, the Chattahoochee River might, after all, have its
uses. Water was, consequently, piped from the river to the city, and is
now generally--albeit in some quarters mournfully--used. Though I am
informed by an expert in Indian languages that the Cherokee word
"chattahoochee" is short for "muddy," the water is filtered before it
reaches the city pipes, and is thoroughly palatable, whether taken plain
or mixed.
Well-off though Atlanta is, she would esteem herself better off, in a
material sense at least, had she a navigable stream; for her chief
industrial drawback consists in railroad freight rates unmodified by
water competition. She has, to be sure, a number of factories, including
a Ford automobile plant, but she has not so many factories as her
strategic position, stated by General Sherman, would seem to justify, or
as her own industrial ambitions cause her to desire. For does not every
progressive American city yearn to bristle with factory chimneys, even
as a summer resort folder bristles with exclamation points? And is not
soot a measure of success?
Atlanta's line of business is largely office business; many great
corporations have their headquarters or their general southern branches
in the city; one of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks is there, and there
are many strong banks. Indeed, I suppose Atlanta has more bankers, in
proportion to her population, than any other city in the United States.
Some of these bankers are active citizens and permanent residents of the
city; others have given up banking for the time being and are in
temporary residence at the Federal Penitentiary.
The character of commerce carried on, naturally brings to Atlanta large
numbers of prosperous and able men--corporation officials, branch
managers, manufacturers' agents, and the like--who, with their families,
give Atlanta a somewhat individual social flavor. This class of
population also accounts for the fact that the enterprisingness so
characteristic of Atlanta is not the mere rough, ebullient spirit of "go
to it!" to be found in so many hustling cities of the Middle West and
West, but is, oftentimes, an informed and cultivated kind of
enterprisingness, which causes Atlanta not only to "do things," but to
do things showing vision, and, furthermore, to do them with an "air."
This is illustrated in various ways. It is shown, for example, in
Atlanta's principal hotels, which are not small-town hotels, or
good-enough hotels, but would do credit to any city, however great. The
office buildings are city office buildings, and in the downtown section
they are sufficiently numerous to look very much at home, instead of
appearing a little bit exotic, self-conscious, and lonesome, as new
skyscrapers do in so many cities of Atlanta's size. Even the smoke with
which the skyscrapers are streaked is city smoke. Chicago herself could
hardly produce smoke of more metropolitan texture--certainly not on the
Lake Front, where the Illinois Central trains send up their black
clouds; for Atlanta's downtown smoke, like Chicago's, comes in large
part from railroads piercing the heart of the city. Where downtown
business streets cross the railroad tracks, the latter are depressed,
the highways passing above on steel bridges resembling the bridges over
the Chicago River. The railroad's right of way is, furthermore, just
about as wide as the Chicago River, and rows of smoke-stained brick
buildings turn their backs upon it, precisely as similar buildings turn
theirs upon Chicago's busy, narrow stream. I wonder if all travelers,
familiar with Chicago, are so persistently reminded of that portion of
the city which is near the river, as I was by that portion of Atlanta
abutting on the tracks by which the Seaboard Air Line enters the city.
Generally speaking, railroads in the South have not been so prosperous
as leading roads in the North, and with the exception of the most
important through trains, their passenger equipment is, therefore, not
so good. The Seaboard Air Line, however, runs an all-steel train between
Atlanta and Birmingham which, in point of equipment, may be compared
with the best limited trains anywhere. The last car in this train,
instead of being part sleeping car and part observation car, is a
combination dining and observation car--a very pleasant arrangement, for
men are allowed to smoke in the observation end after dinner. This is,
to my mind, an improvement over the practice of most railroads, which
obliges men who wish to smoke to leave the ladies with whom they may be
traveling. All Seaboard dining cars offer, aside from regular à la carte
service, a sixty-cent dinner known as the "Blue Plate Special." This
dinner has many advantages over the usual dining-car repast. In the
first place, though it does not comprise bread and butter, coffee or
tea, or dessert, it provides an ample supply of meat and vegetables at a
moderate price. In the second place, though served at a fixed price, it
bears no resemblance to the old-style dining car table d'hôte, but, upon
the contrary, looks and tastes like food. The food, furthermore, instead
of representing a great variety of viands served in microscopic helpings
on innumerable platters and "side dishes," comes on one great plate,
with recesses for vegetables. The "Blue Plate Special" furnishes, in
short, the chief items in a "good home meal."
This is, perhaps, as convenient a place as any in which to speak of
certain points concerning various railroads in the South. The Central of
Georgia Railway, running between Atlanta and Savannah, instead of
operating Pullmans, has its own sleeping cars. This is the only railroad
I know of in the country on which the tenant of a lower berth, below an
unoccupied upper, may have the upper closed without paying for it. One
likes the Central of Georgia for this humane dispensation. The
locomotives of the Western & Atlantic carry as a distinguishing mark a
red band at the top of the smokestack. The Southern Railway assigns
engineers to individual engines, instead of "pooling power," as is the
practice, I believe, on many railroads. Because of this, engineers on
the Southern regard the locomotives to which they are regularly
assigned, as their personal property, and exercise their individual
taste in embellishing them. Brass bands, brass flagstaffs, brass eagles
over the headlight, and similar adornments are therefore often seen on
the engines of this road, giving the most elaborate of them a carnival
appearance, by contrast with the somber black to which most of us are
accustomed, and hinting that not all the individuality has been
unionized out of locomotive engineers--an impression heightened by the
Southern Railway's further pleasant custom of painting the names of its
older and more expert engineers upon the cabs of their locomotives.
* * * * *
Some cities are like lumbering old farm horses, plugging along a dusty
country road. When another horse overtakes them, if they be not
altogether wanting in spirit, they may be encouraged to jog a little
faster for a moment, stimulated by example. If, besides being stupid,
they are mean, then they want to kick or bite at the speedier animal
going by. Some cities are like that, too. If an energetic city overtakes
them, they are not spurred on to emulation, but lay back their ears, so
to speak. Again, there are tough, sturdy little cities like buckskin
ponies. There are skittish cities which seem to have been badly broken.
There are old cities with a worn-out kind of elegance, like that of
superannuated horses of good breed, hitched to an old-fashioned
barouche. There are bad, bucking cities, like Butte, Montana. And here
and there are cities, like Atlanta, reminding one of thoroughbred
hunters. There is a brave, sporting something in the spirit of Atlanta
which makes it rush courageously at big jumps, and clear them, and land
clean on the other side, and be off again. Like a thoroughbred, she
loves the chase. She goes in to win. She doesn't stop to worry about
whether she can win or not. She knows she will. And as the thoroughbred,
loving large and astonishing achievement, lacks the humbler virtues of
the reliable family carriage horse, Atlanta, it cannot be denied, has
"_les défauts de ses qualités_." For whereas, on the side of dashing
performance, Atlanta held a stock fair which, in one year, surpassed any
other held in the South, and secured the grand circuit of races, on the
other side she is careless about hospitals and charities; and whereas,
on the one side, she has raised millions for the building of two new
universities (which, by the way, would be much better as one great
university, but cannot be, because of sectarian domination), on the
other, she is deficient as to schools; and again, whereas she is the
only secondary city to have an annual season of Metropolitan grand opera
(and to make it pay!) she is behind many other cities, including her
neighbors, New Orleans and Savannah, in caring for the public health.
I am by no means sure that the regular spring visit of the Metropolitan
Grand Opera Company may be taken as a sign that Atlanta is peculiarly a
music-loving community. Indeed, I was told by one Atlanta lady, herself
a musician, that the city did not contain more than a thousand persons
of real musical appreciation, that a number of these could not afford to
attend the operatic performances, and that opera week was, consequently,
in reality more an occasion of great social festivity than of devout
homage to art.
"Our opera week," she told me, "bears the same relation to the life of
Atlanta as Mardi Gras does to that of New Orleans. It is an
advertisement for the city, and an excuse for every one to have a good
time. Every night after the performance there are suppers and dances,
which the opera stars attend. They always seem to enjoy coming here.
They act as though they were off on a picnic, skylarking about the
hotel, snap-shotting one another, and playing all manner of pranks. And,
of course, while they are here they own the town. Caruso draws his
little caricatures for the Atlanta girls, and Atlanta men have been
dazzled, in successive seasons, by such gorgeous beings as Geraldine
Farrar, Alma Gluck, and Maria Barrientos--not only across the footlights
of the auditorium, mind you, but at close range; as, for instance, at
dances at the Driving Club, with Chinese lanterns strung on the terrace,
a full moon above, and--one year--with the whole Metropolitan Orchestra
playing dance music all night long!"
Another lady, endeavoring to picture to me the strain involved in the
week's gaieties, informed me that when it was all over she went for a
rest to New York, where she attended "a house party at the Waldorf"!
* * * * *
Of all Atlanta's undertakings, planned or accomplished, that which most
interested my companion and me was the one for turning a mountain into a
sculptured monument to the Confederacy.
Sixteen miles to the east of the city the layer of granite which
underlies the region stuck its back up, so to speak, forming a great
smooth granite hump, known as Stone Mountain. This mountain is one of
America's natural wonders. In form it may be compared with a
round-backed fish, such as a whale or porpoise, lying on its belly,
partly imbedded in a beach, and some conception of its dimensions may be
gathered from the fact that from nose to tail it measures about two
miles, while the center of its back is as high as the Woolworth Building
in New York. Moreover, there is not a fissure in it; monoliths a
thousand feet long have been quarried from it; it is as solid as the
Solid South.
The perpendicular streaks of light and dark gray and gray-green, made by
the elements upon the face of the rock, coupled with the waterfall-like
curve of that face, make one think of a sort of sublimated petrified
Niagara--a fancy enhanced, on windy days, by the roar of the gale-lashed
forest at the mountain's foot.
The idea of turning the mountain into a Confederate memorial originated
with Mr. William H. Terrell of Atlanta. It was taken up with inspired
energy by Mrs. C. Helen Plane, an Atlanta lady, now eighty-seven years
of age, who is honorary president of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy and president of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association.
Mrs. Plane presented the memorial plan to Mr. Samuel H. Venable of
Venable Brothers, owners of the mountain, and Mr. Venable promptly
turned over the whole face of the mountain to the Memorial Association.
The exact form the memorial was to take had not at that time been
developed. Gutzon Borglum was, however, called in, and worked out a
stupendous idea, which he has since been commissioned to execute. On the
side of the mountain, about four hundred feet above the ground, a
roadway is to be gouged out of the granite. On this roadway will be
carved, in gigantic outlines, a Confederate army, headed by Lee and
Jackson on horseback. Other generals will follow, and will, in turn, be
followed by infantry, cavalry and artillery. The leading groups will be
in full relief and the equestrian figures will be fifty or more feet
tall. This means that the faces of the chief figures will measure almost
the height of a man. The figures to the rear of the long column will,
according to present plans, be in bas-relief, and the whole procession
will cover a strip perhaps a mile long, all of it carved out of the
solid mountainside.
A considerable tract of forest land at the foot of the great rock has
already been dedicated as a park. Here, concealed by the trees, at a
point below the main group of figures, a temple, with thirteen columns
representing the thirteen Confederate States, is to be hewn out of the
mountain, to be used as a place for the safe-keeping of Confederate
relics and archives.
Two million dollars is the sum spoken of to cover the total cost, and
one of the finest things about the plans for raising this money is that
contributions from the entire country are being accepted, so that not
only the South, but the whole nation, may have a share in the creation
of a memorial to that dead government which the South so poetically
adores, yet which it would not willingly resurrect, and in the
realization of a work resembling nothing so much as Kipling's conception
of the artist in heaven, who paints on "a ten-league canvas, with
brushes of comet's hair."
Until the Stone Mountain Memorial is completed, Atlanta's most
celebrated monument will continue to be that of Jack Smith. The Jack
Smith monument stands in Oakland Cemetery, not over the grave of Jack
Smith, but over the grave that local character intends some day to
occupy. Mr. Smith is reputed to be rich. He built the downtown office
building known as "The House that Jack Built." As befits the owner of an
office building, he wears a silk hat, but a certain democratic
simplicity may be observed in the rest of his attire, especially about
the region of the neck, for though he apparently believes in the
convention concerning the wearing of collars, he has a prejudice against
the concealing of a portion of the collar by that useless and snobbish
adornment, the necktie. Each spring, I am informed, it is his custom to
visit his cemetery lot and inspect the statue of himself which a
commendable foresight has caused him to erect over his proposed final
resting place. It is said that upon the occasion of last season's vernal
visit he was annoyed at finding his effigy cravated by a vine which had
grown up and encircled the neck. This he caused to be removed; and it is
to be hoped that when, at last, his monument achieves its ultimate
purpose, those who care for the cemetery will see to it that leafy
tendrils be not permitted to mount to the marble collar of the figure,
to form a necktie, or to obscure the nobly sculptured collar button.