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.
RICHARD M. EDMONDS.