Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/356

 348 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Speaking here, I cannot forbear an illusion to the magnificent part your own city of Atlanta has done in the work of upbuilding. It never can be expressed in figures, because the power and effect of Atlanta's inspiration and leadership, her tonic force, are incal- culable and beyond knowledge, but we may note what the figures do tell of this city forty years ago beleagured and a battle ground, burned and wasted, a fallen and dismantled fortress.

The government census of 1905 shows that from 1900 to 1905, the value of the product of Atlanta's manufacturing establishments increased more than 75 per cent. a larger relative increase than either Chicago, New York, Boston, St. Louis, San Francisco, or any other large city in the North or West.

From 1900 to 1905 there was an increase in the value of manu- factured products in the whole United States of 29 per cent. The increase of manufactured products in the State of Georgia for the same period was 60 per cent., or larger than in any other State in the Union east of the Rockies, except the Southern States of North Carolina, Louisiana and Texas, where the growth in manufactures was about the same as in Georgia. The capital engaged in manu- facturing in Georgia, for 1906 shows the astonishing increase in six years of 70 per cent.

As rapidly as their resources have permitted it, the Southern States have looked to the increase of educational facilities and the multiplication of the common schools. The figures show that the expenditures for public schools in 1870-' 71 in the sixteen former slave States and the District of Columbia amounted to $10,385,000. Ten years later, at the close of the period of reconstruction, or say 1879-' 80, these expenditures amounted to $12,678,000. It was then that the South began to recuper- ate. Expenditures for 1890 practically doubled, increasing to $24,880,000, while for 1900 the common school expenditures amounted to $34,805,000. Year by year the amount has steadily increased, until for 1906 the money expended by the sixteen former slave-holding Southern States and the District of Columbia for the education of the young in their public schools approximated $50,000,000.

Optimist as I am as I cannot help being when I look backward to what we have come through and overcome and around me at the