VI.
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!