With the commercial awakening of the South and the increased
importance of the section as a factor in the national life, has
developed a new citizenship—a sub-structure of the Old South with a
modernized superstructure—in which with the sterling and standard
traits of the old regime is strongly blended the nervous activity of
the new. As a means of paying special tribute to the work being
accomplished in the local and general fields by new generation of the
South it is the intention of this magazine to devote a department
toward setting forth their achievements as well for public information
as for acknowledgment of their services, and in offering the initial
installment of this special column it is desired to direct attention
to the highly representative types herein noticed with the significant
intimation that all are yet in the prime of life with greater
opportunities ahead of them.
Richard M. Edmonds.
_The Manufacturers’ Record_, the South’s, if not the country’s, most
representative trades journal, had a modest origin less than a quarter
of a century ago in a small desk in an obscure business office in
Baltimore. Its founder and guiding spirit was Richard M. Edmonds, who
from nothing in the way of working capital save sagacity, energy and
determination, has developed a magnificent journalistic property,
occupying its own seven-story building and has himself become a man of
large affairs and wide influence.
In the development of the now admittedly fertile field of trades
journalism, no one point may be more emphasized as having been
significantly demonstrated than that it holds peculiar and pronounced
opportunities for those desirous of actively participating in the vital
activities of commerce.
In no less than three distinct phases of Southern development have Mr.
Edmonds and his paper conspicuously figured—in the encouragement of
industrial and technical education, in the promotion of the cause of
immigration from among the most desirable domestic elements and the
diverting of the cotton manufacturing business from New England to the
cotton fields. It was Mr. Edmonds’ editorial columns that first started
the now irresistible southward migration of the mills by pointing out
the many and conclusive reasons why the advantages for cotton
manufacturing were all in favor of the South.
As a commercial and financial figure it may be noted that Mr. Edmonds is
now a member of the executive committee of the International Trust
Company, a three million dollar Baltimore corporation, and is chairman
of the executive committee of the Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron
Company, with a capitalization twice that of the former. He is a member
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, the Southern History
Association, the Maryland Historical Society, the Southern Society of
New York, and other organizations.
Mr. Edmonds was born in Norfolk, Va., in 1857, receiving a common school
education in Baltimore, where he started life as a clerk in the office
of the old _Journal of Commerce_.
[Illustration:
RICHARD M. EDMONDS.
]
Jacob McGavock Dickinson.
Successively a teacher, a practitioner of law, a railroad attorney, a
teacher of law, Assistant Attorney General of the United States, general
counsel for one of the country’s large railroad systems and a leading
legal representative of the nation’s interests before the Alaskan
boundary tribunal,—this is the record of this distinguished Southerner,
yet in his physical and mental prime.
A native of Mississippi and a product of ultra Southern environment,
himself a soldier of the gray at the very early age of fourteen, Mr.
Dickinson’s evolution into a representative type of national citizenship
comprises an interesting study in contemporary American life.
Educated at the old University of Nashville and at the Columbia Law
School, New York, with a capstone of extensive travel abroad and special
work in law and economics at the universities of Leipsic and Paris, Mr.
Dickinson has combined an ideal working equipment with a tremendous
energy and a capacity for laborious and sustained mental effort.
As a practitioner his unusual ability was several times recognized by
gubernatorial appointments as special judge on the Tennessee Supreme
Bench, to which he declined a permanent appointment, shortly thereafter
being called to the very high duties of the position of Assistant
Attorney General of the United States. After his retirement from this
position he became District Attorney for Tennessee and northern Alabama
for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, from which he was
promoted to his present position as Chief Counsel for the Illinois
Central, with headquarters at Chicago.
His greatest public service, as is well known, was his representation of
the government in the Alaskan boundary dispute, wherein his presentation
of the nation’s claims is admitted to have had a material influence in
the successful outcome of that famous piece of international litigation.
[Illustration:
JAMES McGAVOCK DICKINSON.
]
Judge Dickinson maintains a close identity with Southern matters by
keeping up his connection with various societies and organizations,
among the number being the Isham Harris Confederate Bivouac, at his
native town, Columbus, Miss.
Samuel Spencer.
In the executive feature of railroad operation Samuel Spencer is a
prominent national figure. From an humble position in the ranks, a
combination of native ability, splendid equipment and consistent
application has resulted in his promotion to the presidency of six large
roads, while he is in addition a member of the board of directors of
nearly a score of others and of nearly a dozen of the country’s most
representative banking and other corporations.
[Illustration:
SAMUEL SPENCER.
]
A native of Georgia, where he was born at Columbus, in 1847, Mr. Spencer
entered the Confederate army, serving the last two years and with much
credit, after which he graduated from the University of Georgia with
A.B., and subsequently from the University of Virginia with his
engineering degree.
Since leaving college in 1869 Mr. Spencer has devoted his energies
uniformly to his ambition to rise to the highest round of the railroad
ladder, with the result that he is now president of the Southern, the
Mobile and Ohio, the Alabama and Great Southern, the Cincinnati, New
Orleans and Texas Pacific, the Georgia Southern and Florida, and the
Northern Alabama, aggregating a mileage of over nine thousand miles and
employing more than forty thousand men.
Besides innumerable other roads, in the management of which Mr. Spencer
is director, he is also a director of the Western Union Telegraph
Company, the Old Dominion Steamship Company, three large New York Trust
companies, the Hanover National Bank of New York, and one of Boston’s
large street railway systems.
Mr. Spencer is identified with the American Society of Civil Engineers
and other representative political, scientific and forestry
associations, and is socially very much of a cosmopolite, being a member
of New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Macon clubs, besides that
wealthy sportsman’s paradise, the Jekyl Island Club.
One of the very few Southerners who have advanced into the circles of
millionairedom, Mr. Spencer resides principally in New York and
Washington, but is much in the South and is still in feeling and
sentiment very much a Southerner.
James Clarke McReynolds.
[Illustration:
JAMES C. McREYNOLDS
]
In the appointment of James C. McReynolds to be Assistant Attorney
General of the United States the President followed his revolutionary
precedent in the selection of Judge Thomas G. Jones, of Alabama, as
occupant of the Federal Bench. In this instance conventional custom was
further ignored in the elevation of a man considerably younger than the
age generally considered requisite.
Born at Elkton, Ky., a little over forty years ago, Mr. McReynolds was
graduated from Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia with
his academic and law degrees, respectively, in both of which
institutions he ranked high in scholarship and character.
His initial experience in public life was gained as the private
secretary of Judge Howell E. Jackson of the United States Supreme Bench,
which, with his already ample legal equipment, served him in good stead
in the general practice in Nashville where his career at the bar was
characterized by ability, integrity and a high order of fidelity to the
many large interests that he represented.
In civic and political movements Mr. McReynolds’ record was signalized
by a notably courageous, independent and unselfish interest.
Since his promotion to the duties of Assistant Attorney General of the
United States he has established principles of large governmental
significance and his able presentation of the government’s litigation
before the Supreme Court has elicited the unanimous commendation of that
impartial and august body.
Mr. McReynolds’ appreciation by the President would have been further
displayed by his appointment as United States District Judge to succeed
Judge Hammond, had not a technicality involving residence interfered.
[Illustration:
THOMAS DIXON, JR.
]
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
One of the most picturesque and dramatic figures in the limelight of
to-day is the Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., a man who has at his age probably
succeeded in as many different lines of endeavor as any other man of the
times.
An intense product of the new South, Mr. Dixon speaks his opinions on
his section’s great and peculiar problems with an incisive virility and
a fearless conviction, and with his novels, “The Leopard’s Spots” and
“The Clansman” has gained a popular audience for the Southern point of
view, before unreached. He has also illumined the divorce evil and the
subject of socialism in his dramatic story, “The One Woman.”
Born in North Carolina just forty years ago, and educated at Wake
Forest, a Baptist denominational school, Mr. Dixon has in rapid
succession essayed the fields of law, the ministry, lecturing and
authorship, and has been prominently identified with each. He was a
member of the North Carolina legislature at one time and is said to have
essayed the histrionic for a brief spell.
First attaining more than casual prominence as a Baptist minister in New
York, Mr. Dixon felt the opportunity of a non-sectarian evangelist
fraught with higher possibilities in the metropolis and more in keeping
with his temperament and convictions, founding a popular church wherein
as a religious and civic free lance he attracted a large and influential
hearing.
On the lecture platform he found a broader and more congenial labor
still, and from lecturing he took to literature, to which he is now
devoting his time exclusively. He has planned a trilogy of novels in
exposition of the negro question, the second of which, “The Clansman,”
takes its text from the vital role played by the Ku Klux in the
redemption of the South from the triple scourge of the carpet bagger,
the scalawag and their irresponsible tool, the ignorant African.
Mr. Dixon’s late successes have constituted him a man of affairs and he
now resides upon his extensive Virginia plantation, where he does much
of his literary work and incidentally lives the life of the Virginia
planter and gentleman of the olden day.
He is proud to admit the valuable assistance rendered him by his wife,
not only as literary critic but as a ready helper in the physical
construction of his productions.
[Illustration:
JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES.
]
John Temple Graves.
As lecturer, orator and editor, John Temple Graves, of Atlanta, is well
known to the country at large. As a lecturer he is classed by George R.
Wendling as being in a class with Governor Taylor at the head of the
Southern field; as an orator he has had the distinction of presenting
his section’s sentiments and peculiar problems to the national ear as
has no other man since Henry W. Grady; and as an editor he has by the
forcefulness of his personality developed in a brief period of time an
extensive business enterprise and a material public influence in his
section.
Mr. Graves’ most telling work on the platform has doubtless been his
contribution to the enlightenment of the Northern mind on the negro
question, while on this and various other subjects he has appeared three
times as the orator of the New England Society of Boston, twice of the
Merchants’ Club of Boston, once of the New England Society of
Philadelphia and twice of the Southern Society of New York. In the
capacity of journalist he has officially represented the South as
spokesman before the World’s Congress of Journalists at Chicago, in
1893, and also before the World’s Press Parliament at St. Louis, last
summer.
As a memorial orator Mr. Graves is entitled to distinguished rank, it
having devolved upon him to deliver the funeral orations over the
remains of his state’s most eminent sons—Grady and Gordon.
Mr. Graves is still a young man and is a native of Rome, Ga., and a
graduate of his state institution at Athens, of which he is a devoted
alumnus. He now devotes his time chiefly to his journalistic interests
and resides in Atlanta.
Though not a politician Mr. Graves has been twice elector at large in
two consecutive presidential campaigns in different states, and has led
the Democratic ticket in both instances.