The Background
Just six days after his previous letter to The Atlanta Constitution, W.W. Goodrich returned to bloviate about manufacturing.
In the following letter, Goodrich suggested Atlanta could attract manufacturers by emulating “wide-awake” cities like Detroit, Denver, and… Rahway, New Jersey (yeah, I dunno), offering residents tax-exempt stocks in local companies and buying from those companies to the exclusion of outside markets.
In a poorly constructed run-on sentence, he also opined that bringing industry to Atlanta would “solve the domestic labor problem”. And if his insinuation wasn’t clear enough, he added: “white artisan labor or factory help bring in their families, female help that would enter our homes and supplant the idle, shiftless race that is now a nuisance.” Lovely.
Goodrich noted the “cassiterite or tin ore” in “North Temercal”, California, a place that apparently never existed — except in his delusional mind. Just as deranged was his parting vision of Atlanta as a city where “the fires of blast furnaces…should light up the horizon of the setting sun to illuminate the whole night away, only to welcome the rising sun, and be dissipated in the light of a cloudless day.”
Have I mentioned lately how much I detest this despicable, fraudulent, lying, racist hack of a writer and architect?
Stand by the Manufacturers.
Editor Constitution–Your articles on manufacturing enterprises, that should be attracted and retained in Atlanta, and encouraged by Atlanta capital, is the uppermost subject in the minds of the leading business men. Mr. Kirkpatrick, of Bain & Kirkpatrick, a courteous gentleman with whom I have had frequent conversations upon this subject, and who is alive to the necessity of Atlanta’s present and future greatness, has spoken in no uncertain tones upon this wide-awake subject. Mr. Kirkpatrick, who is well read and versed in how to get manufacturers to locate, favors the plan adopted by all wide-awake cities, as Detroit, Denver, Rahway, Newark, Elizabethtown and the hosts of cities of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Indiana–this is, for the citizens to take stock, as far as possible, in all laudable enterprises, exempt them from taxation for a specified time, and buy from their half their goods to the exclusion of outside markets. In other words, protection to home enterprise, home capital and home industry.
We have near us vast deposits of iron, coal and the fluxes. In North Temercal, Cal., in Dakota and elsewhere in the United States. We have unbounded supplies in cassiterite or tin ore. We can manufacture the iron here in Atlanta and cast the plates with American tin, and save as per enclosed article at least $25,000,000 annually that now goes abroad.
One industry brings another. Atlanta would be the leading city of the south in everything attainable for the advancement of the body politic.
Again the bringing of these various industries would solve the domestic labor problem, the white artisan labor or factory help bring in their families, female help that would enter our homes and supplant the idle, shiftless race that is now a nuisance.
I am surprised at the lack of interest of some of the editorial fraternity, to the one thing needful for the supremacy of Atlanta as a commercial city. Why, sir, manufacturing enterprises should crown all the business of ingress into this city. The fires of blast furnaces, or rolling mills, of various shops from the making of a pin or needle to the turning out of a thoroughly well built locomotive, or a stationary engine, should light up the horizon of the setting sun to illuminate the whole night away, only to welcome the rising sun, and be dissipated in the light of a cloudless day.
W.W. GOODRICH3
References
- “New Plant Of J.K. Orr Shoe Co. Which Will Be Completed April 1”. The Atlanta Journal, January 28, 1907, p. 3. ↩︎
- “First Train Load Of Machinery Brought South For Shoe Factory”. The Atlanta Constitution, April 7, 1907, p. 5. ↩︎
- Goodrich, W.W. “Stand by the Manufacturers.” The Atlanta Constitution, July 19, 1892, p. 4. ↩︎