Facing Reality

Presented to the Georgia Chamber of Commerce Executives Association

Sea Palms

July 23, 1971

By

Harold A. Dye, Deputy Director

Georgia Department of Industry and Trade

 

I am pleased to be here to talk to you today. In the first place, it is great to be down here at Sea Palms, where I have enjoyed being with each of you. In the second place, I think this organization has as much to do with the total development of Georgia as any other organization in the State.

 

Since this is such a vital organization to the State, and, since I know each of you and you know me, I feel that I can talk to you without pulling punches and can put the facts on the line where we can look at them, and without being overly emotional, determine whether or not we are moving in the right direction.

 

I'd like to do this in a rather unusual way. I'd like to first tell you a few things that are being done and give you the results of these things. The unusual part is that I want to repeat a ten-minute speech that I have given at conferences all over the State. So for a few minutes, you won't be hearing anything new.

 

As you know, the Governor had established a Goals Program for Georgia. He is seeking direction for Georgia and wants that direction to come from Georgians at all levels.

 

The Governor has started a strong information program. To get the information to Georgians, conferences are being conducted in each APDC Area. A workbook has been printed which is filled out at each of these meetings. So far, several thousand workbooks have been completed and turned in to the Planning Bureau for evaluation.

 

There is a section in the book on Economic Development. In this section, questions are asked that should stimulate thinking about economic development. When answers are evaluated and tabulated, goals should be forthcoming. Obviously, the answers are keyed to the discussion questions and to whatever presentations are made to explain the questions.

 

There are also sections in the book on the other seven goals' areas – education, transportation, natural environment, etc.

 

On Page 41 under Natural Environment, there is a statement, "In order to deal effectively with pollution problems, the State may have to discourage population and economic expansion." This statement is to be given a priority in development of Goals. From what I have seen, a great number of people are giving the question a very high priority and this is only a sample of what is being thought, said, and written in Georgia today.

 

You also know from what you read and hear that "industry has been a scapegoat in the pollution question."

 

At these Goals meetings, in my 8-10 minute presentation on Economic Development, I have been attempting to show the value of industrial development to the State so that anyone giving a priority to the question of curtailing industry will at least know what will be lost, and what will happen to our State.

 

Let me give you that speech right now.

 

Economic Development in Georgia is closely related to the other eight Goals programs. It crosses the line of education; it crosses the line of parties; it crosses the line of race and sex and it even crosses the line of relative income. In other words, economic development affects us to a vital degree. Let's examine this point for a moment.

In 1930, the per capita income in Georgia was $340. In that same year, the United State average was $700. Now it doesn't take much figuring to realize that $340 is less than %50 of $700; so for every dollar that we could spend in Georgia in 1930, the rest of the United States has over $2.00 to spend. It meant that the rest of the United States has a better purchasing power and a better tax base and in effect, was twice as well off as we were in Georgia.

 

Our low per-capita income had a decided effect on everything we did in Georgia. We had poor road and poor health facilities. We had poor institutions for the correction of our mental problems, and our jails were full. We had no State parks and our streams ran red with top soil. Our infant mortality rate was the highest in the United States. We had pellagra, malaria and hookworm. We were poverty stricken and were losing our bright minds to some place that offered more. We, individually, and as a state, were really hurting.

 

In 1930, we spend a greater percentage of our tax dollar on education that any other state in the United States. Now, I said a greater percentage of our tax dollar went to education in Georgia in 1930 than any other state in the United States, yet, only Mississippi, Arkansas and South Carolina spent less actual dollars per pupil. We were at the top in percentage, but near the bottom in real dollars. Even though we had the desire to educate our children as indicated by the fact that we were putting a greater percentage of our tax dollars into education than anybody else in America, we could not establish a real educational system.

 

But things have changed. In 1970, the per-capita income of Georgians was over $3,250, a gain of almost 1000% between 1930 and 1970. That's almost $3,000 more to spend this year by each Georgian than in 1930, and instead of being less than 49% of the national average, we are now over 83%. What a gain! But we still have 17% to go to be even with the rest of the United States.

 

Things did change, and are still doing so – but why?

 

Why did it become possible for us to finance schools and roads and hospitals and almost everything that makes like a little better? It was possible because between 1930 and 1970, we went into the manufacturing business along with our agricultural business. Let me repeat that – it was possible because between 1930 and 1970, we went into the manufacturing business along with our agricultural business.

 

Certainly a statement like that needs to be explained.

 

There are only two ways to produce wealth in America today – only two ways in the world for that matter – one is by the production of raw materials, that is – cotton, peanuts, soybeans, cattle, hogs – whatever you want on the farm; the mining of minerals, and the production of forest products. If, for example, you plant a seed which produces fifty- or one-hundred-fold, you have produced wealth.

 

The second means of producing wealth is by manufacturing. You take a raw material and with man-power and machinery, change that raw material in some way so that the finished product is more valuable than the original material.

 

In 1930, and for a hundred years before, we used only one means of producing wealth in Georgia. Except for a few factories here and there to produce textiles, we produced only raw materials.

 

Therefore, our economy was strictly tied to whatever profit could be made from the production of raw materials. And that was not much. Raw materials in 1968 sold at an average price of approximately 15 cents a pound. Last year, the price was approximately the same. That's the average sales price throughout the world and it includes all raw materials – gold, diamonds, cotton, coal, oil, iron, cattle, gravel, and all others. The profit potential from the production of a pound of raw materials, like cotton, is and has been very limited. In 1930, a profit potential was almost non-existent.

 

But, in 1970, we were producing manufactured goods. Manufactured goods sell for an average price of 65 cents a pound. When you bring raw materials at 15 cents a pound in one door of a factory, and there, in the factory change the form of the raw materials so that you can sell the manufactured goods at 65 cents a pound at another door of the factory, you have created wealth and have a much greater profit potential.

 

Now, let me bring the problem home to you in a different way. Suppose that in Georgia, every hour for this whole year, we produce a million pounds of raw material and sell that million pounds outside the state. We take in $150,000 per hour. At the same time, we go outside the state and every hour we buy a million pounds of manufactured goods for use within our state. That costs us $650,000. Obviously, we lose 50 cents on every pound in this transaction, for a total loss to Georgians of one half million dollars each hour. No state could have a viable economy for very long if that state sold only raw materials and had to buy all or most of the manufactured goods used. The balance of payments would be intolerable and would soon make that state a debtor to other states. The surprising thing – or perhaps it's not so surprising, is that in Georgia, we did this almost exclusively until the 1930s and we are still doing it in many areas of the state and on many of the products we use. We sell raw materials cheap and buy back the manufactured product dearly. We sell peanuts at 15 cents a pound and buy back peanut butter at 65 cents a pound. We export over 90% of our peanut crop in the raw material form – the 15 cents a pound form. We really make money for people in Hershey, Pennsylvania and Chicago, Illinois.

 

If we were to lose like that on all our raw materials and not compensate with manufacturing, we would never be able to reach a "state" favorable trade balance. We had an impossible capital outflow in 1930, but are now approaching a balance. When we do reach a favorable trade balance, we will at the same time, reach and pass the national average of per-capita income.

 

Trade balances also apply to counties as well as states and nations. Counties producing only raw materials are faced with the capital outflow problem and a lower per-capita income. They cannot pay for the things that make the county prosper. Did you know that the county in Georgia with the lowest per-capita income has no manufacturing? The county with the second lowest has no manufacturing and so on until you reach the counties with the most manufacturing, where you find the highest per-capita income.

 

The problem that faces us and the problem you should think about in developing the Goals for the State of Georgia is Georgia's need for manufacturing. When we have manufacturing, we produce the means of correcting our problems. When we had no manufacturing, our tax base was so poor that we could not finance a sewage system so we had and still have a pollution problem. With manufacturing, we can buy enough sewer pipe to put in sewage systems. The same applies more or less in all other areas of our lives. If we don't have a solid manufacturing base, we won't have a solid tax base and we won't have a good school system or any other reason for a person to stay in our area.

 

Without manufacturing, there are no jobs and no opportunities for young people. Without manufacturing, our communities and our state will die. On the other hand, with manufacturing, we will prosper.

 

More manufacturing properly integrated into our farm economy will produce the wealth which will raise Georgia's standard of living. Our task is to establish the goals which will permit us to move forward and offer more to our children than we offered to us.

 

Ok, that's the speech. I don't have it written down so it may be a little different each time I give it, but the ideas are the same.

 

You know that I am always followed on the program by someone who talks on natural environment and he usually starts off by saying, "On a certain day in 1956, in London, 4,000 people died as a result of smog. We don't want that to happen in Georgia."

 

Bam! Just like that we are back to the emotional area. To most people, the facts are gone or forgotten. Without another thought, industry is blamed. Industry caused the smog, industry is the polluter. Industry is the killer.

 

Those quick, emotional conclusions are just not right. In fact, they are almost the exact opposite of being right. The real truth is that immensely larger numbers of people died in 1956 because of lack of industry that died because of industry – and the same holds true today.

 

Now you have two statements at opposite ends of the poles. Which is right? What are the problems? Where do we really stand? Well, let's think about this for a moment. Let's keep things in perspective.

 

Just a few days ago, the State of Delaware prohibited the Shell Oil Company from building a $200 million refinery in Delaware. The Governor of Delaware said, "As far as I'm concerned, even if Shell can build a refinery 100% free of pollution, I'm still opposed." He added, "Jobs are very important to our people, but so is the overall quality of life. We can afford to be selective."

 

As for me, Harold Dye, it's just fine if the people of Delaware want to prohibit industry from coming to their state. Perhaps we can gain what they lose? But, what will be the reaction of the people of Georgia? Will we say no?

 

Last week an Atlanta Chamber of Commerce committee submitted a report to the Board of Directors urging that Atlanta's metro population be limited to 1.5 million people.

 

I personally don't think that the Chamber of Commerce will adopt such a policy. Without considerable industrial growth, Atlanta couldn't get the money that would permit them to buy all the land that would be necessary to enforce such a thing. Besides that, most of the Atlanta Chambers members are very practical and knowledgeable, and aren't going to sentence Atlanta to slow death.

 

It's interesting to note that the sub-committee was headed up by a professor who directs Emory's Family Planning Clinic. To tell you the truth, I would expect him to make such a report, but it surprised me to read the final paragraph of the editorial comment on the report. The paragraph reads, "How well the Chamber of Commerce responds to the needs of the metro community in the 1970s will depend on how well and how soon it responds affirmatively to the plan."

Thomas Shepard, Publisher of Look Magazine, has just written an article which he titles, "The Disaster Lobby." Let me read some of what he has written. He starts with a paragraph that sounds like the statement made in "4,000 Dying in London."

 

One morning last fall, I left my office here in New York and hailed a cab for Kennedy Airport. The driver had the radio tuned to one of those daytime talk shows where the participants take turns complaining about how terrible everything is. Air pollution. Water pollution. Noise pollution. You name it, they agonized over it. This went on all the way to Kennedy and as we pulled up at the terminal, the driver turned to me and said, "If things are all that bad, how come I feel so good?"

I wonder how many Americans, pelted day after day by the voices of doom, ever ask themselves that question. I think I have the answer. We feel good because things aren't that bad. Now, I would like to tell you how wrong the pessimists area, and to focus an overdue spotlight on pessimist themselves. These are the people who, in the name of ecology or consumerism or some other "ology" or "ism" are laying siege to our state and federal governments, demanding laws to regulate industry on the premise that the United States is on the brink of catastrophe and only a brand new socio-economic system can save us. I call these people the Disaster Lobby, and I regard them as the most dangerous men and women in America today. Dangerous not only to the institutions they seek to destroy, but to the consumers they are supposed to protect.

 

When it comes to a real measurement of pollution, the single most important measurement is the amount of oxygen in the air. Again, quoting from Shepard, we read:

 

        The Disaster folks tell us that the burning of fuels, by industry, is using up the Earth's oxygen and that, eventually, there won't be any left and we'll suffocate. False. The National Science Foundation recently collected air samples at 78 different sites around the world and compared them with samples taken 61 years ago. Result? There is today 20.95% oxygen in the air – precisely the same amount as there was in 1910.

 

Now, I know this to be a fact. I have seen the National Science Foundation's report. I would go Mr. Shepard one better and say that nature has a way of balancing out its problems including problems caused by man. For example, we have 100 million more pine trees in Georgia today than we did in 1930 and many of them are growing on cotton fields that were losing an inch of topsoil a year by erosion.

 

In this century, three volcanoes have erupted in the world that have put more particulate matter into the air than man in all his existence has done. Yet nature cleaned up after each of them. It took a little time in some cases. If, for example, a lady hung her silk undergarments on the line in Seattle in 1928, six months after the great Alaskan Eruption, the undergarments would dissolve because of the hydrogen sulfide in the air. But six months later, there was no remaining trace of the gas.

 

But what about air pollution? Mr. Shepard writes:

 

You can't deny that our air is getting more fouled up all the time, says the Disaster Lobby. Wrong. I can deny it. Our air is getting less fouled up all the time, in city after city. In New York City, for example, New York's Department of Air Resources reports a year-by-year decrease in air pollutants since 1965. What's more, the New York City air is immeasurably cleaner today than it was a hundred years ago, when people burned soft coal and you could cut the smog with a knife.

 

I remember in 1930, when going to junior high school in Atlanta, I had a winter morning chore of sweeping up the soot on the front porch of our home on Piedmont Avenue. My shirt collar would be black by noon and I hated to show my handkerchief because it too was black. In those years, there wasn't a white building in Atlanta and spring cleaning really meant cleaning up from the winter of pollution.

 

We all know about the latest scare on mercury in the Savannah River. The mercury problem is really exaggerated. Mr. Shepard says:

 

I now come to the case of the mercury in the tuna fish. How did it get there? The Disaster Lobby says it came from American factories, but then the Disaster Lobby believes that all evils in the world come from American factories. The truth, as scientists will tell you, is that the mercury came from deposits in nature. To attribute pollution of entire oceans to the nine hundred tons of mercury released into the environment each year by industry – that's less than 40 carloads – is like blaming a boy with a water pistol for the Johnston Flood. Further proof? Fish caught 44 years ago and just analyzed contain twice as much mercury as any fish processed this year.

Speaking of fish, what about the charge that our greed and carelessness are killing off species of animals? Well, it's true that about 50 species of wildlife will become extinct this century. But it's also true that 50 species became extinct last century. And the century before that, and the century before that. In fact, says Dr. T.H. Jukes of the University of California, some one hundred million species of animal life have become extinct since the world began.

 

Lessening erosion in Georgia has really cut down on all types of pollution. The spring flood of the Flint River carried more pollution to the Gulf than man produces in Georgia in a year. That's a hard-to-measure statement, but I don't doubt it when you consider that those heavy rains cleaned out every barnyard in Georgia and took millions of tons of silt to the sea.

 

Speaking of erosion and wash off, let's consider another greatly exaggerated threat. Mr. Shepard faces this one squarely. He writes:

 

    I'm not a Pollyanna. I am aware of the problems we face and of the need to find solutions and put them into effect. And I have nothing but praise for the many dedicated Americans who are devotion their lives to making this a better nation in a better world. The point I am trying to make is that we are solving most of our problems; that conditions are getting better, not worse; that American industry is spending over 43 billion a year to clean up the environment, and additional billions to develop products that will keep it clean; and that the real danger today is not from the free-enterprise establishment that has made ours the most prosperous, most powerful and most charitable nation on earth. No, the danger today resides in the Disaster Lobby – those crape-hangers who, for personal gain or out of sheer ignorance, are threatening the lives and fortunes of the American people.

    When I speak of a threat to lives, I mean it literally. A classic example of the dire things that can happen when the Disaster Lobby gets busy is the DDT story.

    It begins during World War II when a safe, cheap, and potent new insecticide made its debut. Known as DDT, it proved its value almost overnight. Grain fields once ravaged by insects began producing bumper crops. Marsh land became habitable. And the death rate in many countries fell sharply. According to the World Health Organization, malaria fatalities dropped from four million a year in the 1930s to less than one million in 1968. Other insect-borne diseases also loosened their grip. Encephalitis, yellow fever, typhus, wherever DDT was used, the ailment abated. It has been established that a hundred million human beings who would have died of one of these afflictions are alive today because of DDT.

    Then, in 1962, a lady named Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring, in which she charged that DDT had killed some fish and some birds. That's all Disaster Lobby needed. It pounced on the book, embraced its claims – many of them still unsubstantiated – and ran off to Washington to demand a ban on DDT. And Washington meekly gave them their ban, a gradual DDT phase-out. Other countries followed the U.S. lead.

    The effects were not long in coming. Malaria, virtually conquered throughout the world, is having resurgence. Food production is down in many areas. And such pests as the gypsy moth, in hiding since the 1940s, are now munching away at American forests.

    In some countries – among them Ceylon, Venezuela and Sweden – the renaissance of insects has been so devastating that laws against DDT have been repealed or amended. But in our country the use of DDT, down to 10% of its former level, may soon be prohibited entirely.

    The tragedy is that DDT, while it probably did kill a few birds and fish, never harmed a single human being except by accidental misuse. When the ultimate report is written, it may show that the opponents of DDT – despite the best intentions – contributed to the deaths of more human beings that did ALL of the natural disasters in history.

 

There is another view that Mr. Shepard did not include in his article. Many of the nation's environmentalists are recommending the elimination of inorganic fertilizer along with pesticides.

 

Scientists at Iowa State University conducted a study this year to learn what would happen to farm production if use of inorganic fertilizers were banned. They concluded that for the next decade, crop average would have to be increased about 22% and food costs would rise about 41%.

 

Let's take this a little further. Imagine cutting forests to make up for the farm acreage required. Forest product prices go up and game preserves go down. Erosion increases and production of oxygen decreases. But imagine, if you can, the trillions of flies produced in organic fertilizers with no insecticides to counter them.

 

Enjoying our environment would be impossible. Life will be something like that described by Mr. Dolson, Chairman of the Board of Delta Airlines, when he was asked about the pollution caused by jet aircraft. He said, "If all the people who now travel by jet were to travel by horse and buggy, you would have to be six feet tall to see above the horse manure."

And this reminds us of the good old days.

 

Again from Mr. Shepard:

 

    Members of the Disaster Lobby look back with fond nostalgia to the good old days when there weren't any nasty factories to pollute the air and kill the animals and drive people to distraction with misleading advertisements. But what was life really like in America 150 years ago? For one thing, it was very brief. Life expectancy was 38 years for males. And it was a grueling 38 years. The work week was 72 hours. The average pay was $300. That's per year! The women had it worse. Housewives worked 98 hours a week, and there wasn't a dishwasher or vacuum cleaner to be had. The food was monotonous and scarce. The clothes were rags. In the winter you froze and in the summer you sweltered and when an epidemic came – and they came almost every year – it would probably carry off someone in your family. Chances are that in your entire lifetime you would never hear the sound of an orchestra or own a book or travel more than 20 miles from the place you were born.

 

Now I could go on with this, but I think we have heard enough to know that there are at least two sides to the problem.

 

There are some positive conclusions that can be drawn that may be far more important to us than we think.

 

California has an air pollution problem. It is caused by a temperature inversion which make South Carolina a hothouse. Southern California's air is held in place by a temperature blanket, just as if it were a glass covered hothouse. California needs stringent rules to cope with this problem. But these rules are for California. They should not be for Georgia.

 

Early last spring, Atlanta had a pollution count of 89. The television weatherman recommended that we shut down the Georgia Power plants along the Chattahoochee to lower the count. (100 is supposed to be the danger point.) The weatercaster did not consider that two-thirds of the count came from pollen in the air and only a small, small fraction came from Georgia Power. He should have recommended that we shut down nature herself, but then again, he is a member of Mr. Shephard's Disaster Lobby.

 

On the day we had a high pollution count, Birmingham had a count that was over twice as high – way past the so-called danger point. But Birmingham is unique, surrounded as it is by mountains. Automobiles, factories, people and nature combined to fill the bowl with a high pollution count. Atlanta on the Piedmont Plateau will never be faced with the same problem. Nature gave Atlanta a great location. Birmingham abatement laws should be far more strict than Atlanta because Birmingham, like Pittsburg and Southern California, has a unique natural condition which must be faced.

 

We do not want to make Georgia pollution abatement laws more stringent than those of our surrounding states. After all, the air over Alabama today will be over Georgia tonight. If Alabama gets an industry that we have prohibited because of inequitable laws, we will have their pollution from that industry tomorrow, if the industry created pollution to begin with.

 

Our legislature meets in a few months and chances are that dozens of laws will be presented to them for action. One of our jobs is to help acquaint the people of Georgia with the real facts, so that they will not place ill-advised pressure on our legislature.

 

This is my real point today. Let's tell the people the truth about our need for industry and that with industry, we can solve our problems. We must acquaint the people of Georgia with the real facts of life in Georgia.

 

And the fact is, stated so that we cannot forget it, "Without industry, Georgia will die."

Background of Industrial Development In The South

Presented to the Southern Industrial Development Council (SIDC)

At Biloxi, Mississippi

October, 1971

By

Harold A. Dye, Deputy Director

Georgia Department of Industry and Trade

 

In an advertisement a few days ago, "Industry Week" made the following statements:

 

    "The United States' share of world steel production dropped from 47% in 1950 to 20% in 1970."

 

    "Our share of the world auto production slid from 81% in 1950 to 33% last year."

 

    "Hourly employment costs in this country are double and triple those to our overseas competitors – and accelerating."

 

    "We are exporting our jobs. We are expending our national strength by making economic decisions on political ground. We are destroying our tax bases."

 

In 1950 and before, while the United States was leading the world in industrial production, we in the South were not really participating. We were still in the fledgling stage, but in the fifties we were beginning to show that we could fly.

 

Between 1950 and 1970, had we not made so much progress in the South, these national figures would be even worse than they are. The South has, in reality, kept the bottom from falling out of our national economy and even though belatedly, is making up for the years before 1950 when we were the land of the one-crop economy and were no more than a colony of the industrial North.

 

As you know, there are only two ways to produce wealth – one is by the production of raw materials; by farming – cotton, peanuts, soybeans, cattle, hogs; by fishing; by the mining of minerals; and by the production of forest products. If, for example, you plant a seed which produces fifty or one hundred fold, you have produced wealth.

 

Today, raw materials sell for an average price of approximately 15 cents a pound. If you take raw materials and, with manpower and machinery, change the raw material so that the finished product is worth more than the original material, you have the other means of producing wealth –manufacturing.

 

In the 1930s and 1940s, and for a hundred years before, we used only one means of producing wealth in Georgia and in the other states of the Southeast. Except for a few factories here and there to produce textiles, we produced only raw materials. Therefore, our economy was strictly tied to whatever profit could be made from the production of raw materials. And that was not much. Even now with all the government subsidies, the production of raw materials will not produce enough wealth to make a state or region have a viable economy.

 

But today, we are also producing manufactured goods. When you bring raw materials at 15 cents a pound in one entrance of a factory and there in the factory, change the form of the raw materials so that you can sell the manufactured goods at 65 cents a pound, you have created wealth and you have a profit potential that may be as much as 35 cents or 40 cents a pound. It is far greater than the profit coming from a pound of raw materials and while producing that pound of manufactured goods, you have employed many more people and have paid them higher wages than the farmer ever employed or paid.

 

Now, let us look at this from a different point of view. Suppose that in our state, every hour for this whole year, we produce a million pounds of raw material and sell that million pounds outside the state. We take in $150,000 per hour. That sounds good. At the same time, we go outside the state and every hour we buy a million pounds of manufactured goods for use within our state. That cost us $650,000. Obviously, we lose 50 cents on every pound of this transaction, for a total loss to our state of one-half million dollars every hour. No state could have a viable economy for very long if that state sold only raw materials and had to buy all or most of the manufactured goods used. The balance of payments would be intolerable and would soon make that state a debtor to other states.

 

The surprising thing – or perhaps it is not so surprising – is that in most southern states we did this almost exclusively until the 1930s and we are still doing it in many areas of our states and on many of the products we use; we sell raw materials cheap an buy back the manufactured product dearly. The classic example right now, and a popular one to talk about is peanuts. In Georgia, we sell peanuts at 15 cents a pound and buy back peanut butter at 65 cents a pound. We export over 90% of our peanut crop in the raw material form – the 15 cents a pound form. We really make money for people in Hershey, Pennsylvania and Chicago, Illinois. And those states are not even in the SIDC.

 

If we were to lose like this on all our raw materials and not compensate with manufacturing, we would never be able to reach a "state" favorable trade balance.

 

We had an impossible capital outflow before 1950 but are now approaching a balance. When we do reach a favorable trade balance, we will at the same time reach and pass the national average on per-capita income. Unfortunately, as the South obtains a favorable trade balance the United States as a whole is losing its favorable position. This month of October may see the United States reach its greatest trade deficiency of all times. Of course, this unfavorable position is caused in part by the East and Gulf Coast dock strikes, but as the "Industry Week" ad pointed out, "There are other reasons."

 

Trade balances also apply to counties as well as states and nations. Counties producing only raw materials are faced with a capital outflow problem and a lower per-capita income. They cannot pay for the things that make the county prosper. In Georgia, the county with Georgia's lowest per-capita income has no manufacturing. The county with the second lowest per-capita income has no manufacturing, and so on until you reach the counties with the most manufacturing where you find the highest per-capita income.

 

If you think this applies only to Georgia, just check your own counties. There may be exceptions but the rule applies. Obviously, to prosper, a county must engage in manufacturing to produce wealth.

 

Let's examine this from a state point of view. In 1930, the per-capita income in Georgia was $340. In that same year, the United States average was $700. Now it doesn't' take much figuring to realize that $340 is less than 50% of $700, so for every dollar that we could spend in Georgia in 1930, the rest of the United States had over $2 to spend. It meant that the rest of the United States had a better purchasing power and a better tax base and, in effect, was twice as well off as we were in Georgia. Now just to refresh your memory – there were several southern states that were no better off than Georgia. The South as a whole was in dire straits.

 

Our per-capita income had a decided effect on everything we did. We had poor roads and poor health facilities. We had poor institutions for the correction of our mental problems and our jails were full. We had no state parks and our streams ran red with top soil. Our infant mortality rate was the highest in the United States. We had pellagra, malaria, and hookworm. We were poverty stricken and were losing our bright minds to some place that offered more. And talk about pollution. In those days, we really had it. We, individually, as a state and as a region were really hurting.

 

In 1930, Georgia spent a greater percentage of its tax dollars on education than any other state in the United States. Now, I said a greater percentage of our tax dollar went to education in Georgia in 1930 than any other state in the United States, yet only three other states, and they were southern states, out of all the states in the Union, spent less actual dollars per pupil. We were at the top in percentage, but near the bottom in real dollars. Even though we had the desire to educate our children as indicated by the fact that we were putting a greater percentage of our tax dollars into education than anybody else in America, we could not establish a real educational system.

 

But things have changed. In 1970, the per-capita income of Georgians was over $3,300 – a gain of almost 1000% between 1930 and 1970. That is almost $3,000 more to spend this year by each Georgian than in 1930, and instead of being less than 49% of the national average, we are now over 85%. The same general increases apply to other southern states.

 

Finally, we are on our way. And don't ever forget it, we are on our way because we went into manufacturing – and there is something else we must never forget – if for any reason we so handicap our manufacturing that we drive it overseas – we will be right back where we were – a poverty stricken, run down section of the world buying from others and soon living in the past.

 

Since we were in such desperate straits until so recently, why didn't we know that we needed a double barrel economy and not a single barrel approach?

 

I think maybe that in the last 50 to 70 years, we have known that we had to get into manufacturing but then as we wanted to change, we found that we were faced with unbelievable handicaps and road blocks.

 

When our ancestors settled in this part of America, the land was so bountiful that we missed the industrial revolution and instead developed an aristocratic land owning society. I think a better name for that "Pre-war between the states society" would be the "have and have not" period. We had the extremes but we did not have a large middle class and that lack of a large middle class was to handicap us for a hundred years to come.

 

The War Between the States changed our attitudes but not our ability to do anything about the conditions in which we found ourselves. We could see that we lost the war because we could not compete in the munitions factories, in the ship yards, and on the railroads. We could not produce the manufactured goods to sustain ourselves.

 

Yet, after the war, when we tried to change, we were faced with strong, entrenched competition. We had lost our capital wealth and had to rebuild from scratch. We borrowed money and paid interest to other sections of the country and we were faced with the hidden tariffs of differential freight rates.

 

And while we fought outsiders, we fought a worse battle from within. We had the "Lost Cause" philosophy and we gloried in that "Lost Cause" at the expense of future causes. We had politicians who could get elected time after time by raking over dead ashes of the Civil War. Politicians who could fight with all their might for a cotton subsidiary and never raise their voice to get rid of discriminatory freight rates – but then as now, the politician only expressed the thoughts of the people.

Geared to the philosophy of the past, our schools for many years did not prepare young people for a changing future – about half were not being prepared for anything but the farm, and more of the one-crop economy that was already hampering our progress.

 

But things changed.

 

You know these things as well as I do.

 

The freight rates were equalized. Trucking and later aircraft came along to help tie our far flung Southland together.

 

The educational system began to change for the better and vocational education reared its beautiful head. And, we established great institutions like Georgia Tech, which prepared our youth for the great technical age. (I know there are other great universities and colleges in every state in the SIDC, but remember, I'm from Georgia Tech – The Top One).

 

Capital became available spurred by World War II and by Coca-Cola and cigarette and oil fortunes and by industrial revenue bonds. Private banks began to make business loans and fledglings like Delta Airlines became giants!

 

The market area improved because people began to save money and southern manufacturers began to sell some of their goods at home. Right now the biggest market in the United States is our Southland and it is economy a better market as our per-capita income increases.

 

Other things happened too. Some we made to happen but some just came along as a bonus. Herty made paper from pine trees that were here all the time. But, the Great Paper Making Industry and its tremendous ancillary industries were created.

 

Yet with everything considered, the greatest change was in our philosophy. We began to want industry and by wanting industry we did the things necessary to get it. Just wanting the industry may have been the biggest forward step of all.

 

 

Now! Do we keep on moving forward, or do we help America go from the number one industrial nation, with the world's highest living standards, to a second-class country in one generation? We can easily do that. In fact, the seed may already be sown.

 

I, for one, am very much afraid that America has let the pendulum swing so far in the direction of the environmentalist and ecologist that the pendulum may be stuck and it just might not swing back to an area of reason.

 

Pollution has been unbelievably overplayed. Talking about it, making fortunes for some and electing thousands of others to office, just like the "Lost Cause" elected thousands in past years.

 

A few months back, the editor of LOOK magazine, in an article entitled "Disaster Lobby" pointed out the danger very well. If you have not read that article, you should. It gives the thinking man an opportunity to do something about the emotional pseudo-environmentalist and would-be ecologist.

 

In the next Sessions of our State Legislatures and the present Session of the U.S. Congress, our representatives are being and are going to be bombarded with requests in the name of environmental preservation, to prohibit industry and industrial development. The Muskie Bill is an example. Get it and read it. That bill can easily put our chemical industry out of business in America. Even now preliminary studies indicate that the Muskie Bill alone will add 25% to the cost of production in American factories. With such an increase in American manufacturing, how can we possibly compete with overseas manufacturers? What will happen to our domestic inflation?

 

Inflation will go right out the top. We already have tremendous labor differentials and even a small percentage increase might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Careful or we will one day see "imports" greatly outweigh "exports."

 

Even now the EPA is adding six months to every development project just by delaying permit approvals. Ask Bob Leak, the Director of Economic Development in South Carolina, about the ninety-some odd permits that are required to get one power plant going in South Carolina and after three years how only 87 have been obtained. That is one reason for the energy shortage we are now experiencing. Bob is sitting right over there.

 

Lake Lanier is a man-made lake on the Chattahoochee River about 30 miles north of Atlanta. Last year, over 10,000,000 visitors enjoyed the lake and spend countless millions of dollars either coming to Georgia or staying in Georgia for their vacations on the lake. The dam and its controls also made the Chattahoochee River below the dam into one of the beautiful streams of America. And, it was not before the dam was built! The river was at flood tide in the fall and spring and a dry gulch in the summer. In low water periods, the river could not supply enough water to Atlanta with a quarter million people. Now, with one and a half million people (in 2007, over 3 million people) and the lake, Atlanta is easily supplied with bountiful water, a scenic river and an attraction that draws ten million people a year. But Atlanta is growing fast. The day will come when we must have other sources of water.

 

There were people who fought building Lake Lanier because they said it would damage the environment, destroy the river and ten thousand people would lose a place to fish and swim, etc.

 

The same kind of people are now fighting the development of a lake on the Flint River with a dam about 50 miles south of Atlanta (fifteen miles south of Hartsfield, Georgia's great international airport). They argue that ten thousand people will not be able to enjoy the river after it is inundated. Maybe the ten thousand people won't but ten million people will, and Albany and Bainbridge and other cities to the south will not have annual floods, but will have a better, cleaner river and a guaranteed supply of water just like Atlanta.

 

Did you know? There was actually an opposition article in an Atlanta newspaper with a heart-rendering story about two little male birds singing to each other across the Flint River. One said to the other, "You stay on your side and I'll stay on mine." These two birds would lose their nests. I guess that it is alright but I for one am far more interested in the welfare of the people of Georgia than I am in the birds. If the lake is built, it will be too wide for one bird to invade the other's territory. We must built the already funded ($80,000,000) Sprewell Bluff Dam.

 

Before leaving lakes, I would like to mention one lake in North Georgia called Allatoona. Allatoona is man-made just like Lake Lanier and it too draws millions of visitors yearly. Interstate 75 was planned to cross Allatoona but the environmentalists forced a re-routing and a three year delay because they said I-75 would destroy the natural beauty of Lake Allatoona.

 

They forget that beautiful Allatoona would not be there in the first place except for man and they did not consider the loss to Georgia of thousands of people routed around Georgia to avoid the uncompleted stretch of I-75. They also forgot the lives that will be lost on an overloaded US 41 which must stay in use for an additional three years.

 

Well, the loss to Georgia of travel business will be and already has been in the tens of millions of dollars, and if just one life is lost, that is an irreplaceable loss to me. That one life is worth far more than the self-satisfaction of a pseudo-environmentalist.

 

I have talked about man-made lakes in Georgia to show just part of the problem. I chose lakes because we are having similar problems in each of the states in the SIDC and you are probably aware of some of these cases.

 

I am sorry that time does not permit me to give you dozens of examples of the problems facing us. But if I can close by making a request, it might be of more value.

 

Let us read up on the subject of environment and on other things that can and are being used to restrict industry and our overall economic development and let us begin a counter campaign with our public officials.

 

Our public officials, who are for the most part, intelligent and well-meaning individuals, who do not want to see America fall back. Let us give them the ammunition to fight the battle – let us write and call and tell. Let us put the South and American back in business.

 

 

The Miracle of Dunkirk

Remnants of the British expeditionary force, battered French divisions, small units and stragglers from Belgium and Holland and even a few Moroccans retreated toward Dunkirk. Over a million men were rolling, punch drunk, before the onslaught of the world’s finest army, the invincible German Wehrmacht.

Hitler’s Panzer divisions moved almost at will against the allies. The fire power of the allies, their communications, their coordination, and their will to fight, were slowly being dissipated with each new thrust of the Germans. The roar of tanks, the sickening scream of Stukas, and above all, the smell of death on the field of Flanders, brought disaster to the minds of every man in the allied forces. Disaster in the minds of the fighting men meant disaster to the army and to the allied cause.

In England, in what was left of France, in every part of the allied world, word came of the impending disaster. Over a million men, the cream of the allied forces in Europe, were being smashed into bits in the fields of Flanders, and not a thing in the allied arsenal could prevent it.

The Royal Navy, mightiest in the world, was powerless to give aid. The RAF was practically non-existent, battered to pieces by the Luftwaffe. Reinforcements, if they existed, could only wade into the water of the channel and look toward France. Never had a nation, never had a cause, found a greater challenge than this. In two days there would be no allied army in Europe. In two days the allied cause would be but a chapter in history.

The Commander of the German armies watched the allies start to fold and gave the order, “Seize Dunkirk, destroy the enemy forces and prepare to invade England!”

General Guderian, Commander of the German armor, gave the order, and the Panzer division rolled toward Dunkirk. These were the same Panzer divisions that had annihilated the Polish armies in less than six weeks. Now Seip Dietrich and his Adolph Hitler division led the lunge for the coast. Two days and the ring of steel would be closed. The allied army would be no more. The great German victories in Poland would be repeated and increased in magnitude, but now in France.

The orders were given, the Wehramacht was rolling. The allied army was counting its last hours and there was no help. In all the world there was no help.

Adolph Hitler, at his headquarters, stalked back and forth and rubbed his hands, shouting with glee. He alternately smirked or shook with laughter. Victory was his. England, hated England, was bending her knee, bending her knee to Adolph Hitler. Adolph Hitler was “God!”

Guderian’s Corps roared west. Seip Dietrich’s division tore through the wavering defense line of the allies. General Rundsted, commander of all the German armies, subordinate only to Hitler, felt the joy of victory well won. Rundsted watched his dictator and thought his dictator was “God.”

One moment Hitler’s face was flushed with victory. The next moment, it was suddenly, unexplainably, contorted, either with fear or unbridled ecstasy. Runsted saw the Fuhrer’s eyes glaze over. He heard his shrill shriek of hysteria, and his unbelievable words, though barely discernible, “Stop the army! Stop the army! Leave Dunkirk to the Luffwaffe!”

Runsted jumped to Hitler’s side. “But my Fuhrer, Dunkirk is yours in only a few hours.” He pleaded, “Let us go on.”

“Stop the army. Leave Dunkirk to the Luftwaffe,” was the only answer.

The order came to Guderian, “Cease your advance at the Aa Canal. Reorganize and prepare to advance on order.”

Seip Dietrich read the order and like Rommel, later in Africa, tore up the paper and moved across the Aa. But his was only one division. Later, almost without opposition, the advance units of his division reached the coast above Dunkirk. There, Seip Dietrich watched as the Luftwaffe failed to destroy the allied army or even to stop the armada of small boats from England from rescuing the remnants of the allied army from the shores of France. With tears of frustration in his eye, he ordered his tanks to fire on destroyers of the British Navy.

Germany, not England, lost the battle of Dunkirk. The battles for France and Flanders were the great victories for Germany. But the battle for Dunkirk was lost, and with it, a war. And, the Germans lost the great battle of the war, not on the battlefields of Dunkirk, but rather on the banks of the As Canal where no shots were fired and in the mind of Das Fuhrer, hundreds of miles from the battle, at the German supreme headquarters in Berlin.

600,000 British soldiers escaped from Dunkirk. Those 600,000 soldiers could and would have been cut off at Dunkirk, but for two days of respite. Those men escaped to form a British defense army, and later the backbone of the allied invasions force because Hitler, for no earthly reason, ordered the German army to stop on the Aa Canal.

Against the pleading of Rundsted and against the better judgment of every officer of any rank in the Garman army, Adolph Hitler ordered the halt. He had no reason to issue such an order, but – he did. He alone could prevent the destruction of the British Army, yet he, who hated England most, spared England.

To me, perhaps to many, the halting of the German armies on the Aa Canal is a greater miracle than the destruction of the city of Ai by Joshua in Biblical times. Even the names are similar. God told Joshua what to do. Joshua did as he was told. God forced Hitler to do as God willed, and gave victory to those who fought for God. The difference in time of a few thousand years is not a barrier to God.

In the Old Testament, Nebuchadnezzar thought of himself as “God.” In the language of King James perhaps, no, not perhaps, but in fact, Hitler thought he was “God.”

O Hitler, thy kingdom will depart from thee, and they armies shall not gain victory; And great fear entered the heart of Hitler and he knew not which way to turn; his countenance was like unto a golden idol, half formed by ist maker; His hands shook, and his reason parted, and when he spoke, his voice was shrill like the voice of a small child; and his orders were without reason.

The language bridges the gap of time and leaves the believer with sure knowledge that God still influences decisions and actions in favor of the righteous as He did in the days of Joshua and Nebuchadnezzar.

Even the historical reader with little faith can see the influence of an “Outside Force” in this, the Great Battle, the Decisive Battle of World War II.

Harold Dye
June 1958

To Right A Wrong -- Many Wrongs

In 1971 while speaking to a group of Georgia Educators about Vocational Education, especially the technical side, I outlined why we in Georgia were, at that time, in such a precarious economic position; what had been done to alleviate the problems that faced us; and foreboding about our future if we did not solve some of the major problems facing us.

That night my major emphasis was to help improve our Georgia work force in order for Georgia to attract more sophisticated industry, thereby improving the standard of living for all Georgians. I told why the South – Georgia in particular – was so far behind the Northern states in per-capita income, which has resulted in many socioeconomic problems, including very poor race relations.

I said we had been, and still were being, exploited by the Industrial North to keep the 11 Confederate States subservient, and in reality, as a “colony” of the Industrial North.

That point, “being a colony of the Industrial North,” was recently reinforced in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Professor Emeritus Carol E. Scott. She quoted the great English writer, Charles Dickens who in the late 1860s, wrote, “The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.” (I think Charles Dickens knew what he was talking about.)

Professor Scott followed that positive statement with, “Just as eliminating slavery may not have been the North’s prime motivation, the fact that late in the war, Confederate soldiers successfully petitioned their Congress and President to allow the enlistment in the army of slaves who would be promised their freedom, suggests that preserving slavery may not have been the most important reason for Southern states fighting for their independence.”

It is obvious that the South did not fight to keep the blacks in slavery nor did the North fight to free the blacks. It was just as obvious that the North was fighting to preserve the Union; which is a very noble, worthy cause. But! It was a perverse Union with one group of states dominating another group of state – the North dominating the South.

The South fought the war because they, the Southern states, were being invaded by a much superior force and because the states of the South believed they had a right to secede from the Union to preserve their rights and prevent being completely dominated. It was the old story of the Colonizer over the Colony; England over the States. But now, the people of the North fought against their own blood to hold their Southern colony.

Before closing my talk that night back in 1971, I said, “Let me add a warning. Remember there are still many people in America who would like to see the South remain an economic colony to the Industrial North; people who would like to keep wages in the North high, while depressing ours.

"In 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act was introduced. The Act was named for its chief sponsors: Senators Davis of Pennsylvania and Bacon of New York. The law was designed to address what its big labor supporters described as the “growing menace” of black workers who were depressing the wages of employees working for government contractors.

"The law, which is still in effect, has cost the federal government billions of dollars and kept both black and white southerners “down” because they could not get into the protected unions, where the higher wages are being paid.

I personally am afraid that Davis-Bacon is a continuation of the same old practices of the past, “To keep us as the special private colony of the Industrial North.” And! What I fear most – to be successful they will continue to promote and exploit strife between the black and white races. I hope that I am wrong, but as Davis-Bacon is still on the books, I feel that I am right.

There are other warning flags for the future. Let us take heed. When I made that statement in 1971, I had no idea that “warning flags” might in themselves be the catalysts for continuing the denigration and exploitation of the South and its people, by the rest of the United States, particularly by the Northeast and West Coast.

The question is, why should a flag be such a divisive issue: not between the North and South, but within the South; between the blacks and whites of the South who should be walking together to eliminate the cause of the destructive divisiveness?

A brief outline of what has occurred in the South from about 1800 will give us the reasons for the animosity which exists between the South and the North of our country; which in turn has led to sometimes terrible divisiveness between certain elements of our black and white societies.

With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became king in the South. In the early 1800s, the demand world-wide for cotton became so great that the price of cotton skyrocketed. The South, especially Georgia, prospered. With money to spend, and cotton to trade, the South became the envy of the rest of the United States.

With the demand for cotton came the demand for laborers. England and New England supplied the answer to the labor shortages – black African slaves.

A Yankee slave ship’s captain, sailing out of Boston to the African west coast purchased slaves from African Chiefs for trinkets, or whiskey; crammed the poor humans below the deck like sheep; sailed for America; dumped the dead and dying overboard while out of site of land; sold the survivors in a Southern seaport where he was not allowed to pull his ship into the dock because of the terrible stench and filth. The captain then sailed with his blood money to Boston where he and his crew rested a few days before sailing again to Africa for another cargo of “black gold.” The purchase price of the black gold became a part of the capital base of the North, never to be used for repatriation or repayment when the slaves were freed.

Over a period of about fifty years, the South prospered economically. The standard of living for the human debris from Africa, in most cases, was better by far than any place in Africa; better than that of the poor immigrants and the child laborers of the North. Even so, the South was still far behind the North in that vital economic requirement – manufacturing. And! The Industrial North wanted to keep it that way.

It was a vicious cycle. Slavers from New England sold us salves so we could produce cotton; so that they could manufacture cotton cloth and clothing and sell it to us. But, the same arrangements working so well for the North were also working well for England. The competition from England was too much for the Industrial North.

With England as the North’s only competitor, the answer was simple for the North’s protective tariffs – tariffs in reality aimed at England and one section of the United States – the eleven states of the cotton belt. From that time on, the break-up of the Union was inevitable. In 1861, the eleven Cotton States legally seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America.

The resulting War of Secession or Civil War really ended with the fall of Atlanta in 1865. Sherman’s March To The Sea, which devastated Georgia, was anti-climatic and horrible to Georgia. It was the March of Infamy. The scar of the march remained for a hundred years and in some cases are still with us.

Sherman’s refusal to exchange prisoners of war created terrible problems for a Confederacy that no longer had the means to feed its own soldiers or prisoner of war. The needless death and destruction of the last month of the war made it almost impossible for the South to recover, and integrate over three million freed slaves into a non-existing economy. At the war’s end, the South was no more than a vast tenement farm with the tenants having no money to even buy the seeds to plant for future crops – crops that might pay for the seed, feed the people and perhaps, do something for the freed slaves, and for the equally impoverished southern whites.

Inept government at state and local level; a federal government with an overriding desire to punish the white people of the South; an invasion from a vindictive North of carpetbaggers and charlatans; military governments controlled by the dregs of the Union army; and the outright purchase or confiscation of Southern Railroads by Northern industrialists; combined to be more devastating to the South than Sherman’s "Genghis Kahn" March To The Sea had been.

This 12-year period (1865-1877), which should have been, and could have been, a period of peace and unification of a torn nation was instead a period of strife and Northern vengeance-seeking, actually condoned and fomented by the “occupying” military forces. A prostrate, broken South, black and white, was plowed into the red clay of Georgia.

In retrospect, had Germany and Japan at the end of World War II been treated as horribly by the Untied States as the South was treated by the victorious Northern States and the United States Congress; today there would be no Germany or Japan as free countries. And all of Europe and a great part of Asia would be Socialists – dominated by the Soviet Union.

At the end of the Northern military occupations in 1877, Georgia was allowed to form a much needed militia. The Gate City Guard of Atlanta, a military company formed in 1856 to defend Atlanta and Georgia against invasion, was reconstituted. The Gate City Guard became a major component of the Georgia Militia in Atlanta.

In the late 1870s, antagonism between the North and South was still rampant, inflamed by a carry-over of wartime propaganda used so effectively by both sides; before, and during, the war, but after the war, only by a vicious Northern press – a press which published articles and editorials against the South in nearly every issue of the Northern newspapers. For example, stories about Andersonville placed all the blame for the hunger and starvation of Union prisoners of the Confederates, never mentioning the fact that General Sherman had refused to accept his own Union soldiers in exchange for Confederate prisoners, and finally, even when there were no Confederate prisoners to exchange, he refused to accept Union prisoners under any conditions, thereby forcing the Confederates to feed hapless Union prisoners. The Confederate guards themselves were on the same rations as the Union prisoners. The types of food were the same; perhaps the Confederate guards could tolerate the different foods better than the Union prisoners. During World War II, American prisoners died in Japanese prison camps or on marches because they could not tolerate Japanese food. To this day, the true story of Andersonville and other prisons, North and South, has not been told.

In 1870, Captain Joseph E. Burke, Commander of the Gate City Guard, decided in order to obtain enduring peace and reconciliation between the North and South, that some “magnificent gesture” on the part of the South was required. He determined that a Peace Mission to the North with the Gate City Guard in full uniform leading the way, no matter what the anticipated danger, would be the conciliatory action vitally needed.

To the surprise of many, Captain Burke and the Gate City Guard found a hardy welcome for the “Peaceful Invasion” of the North. Thousands turned out in major cities to cheer the “Best Drilled Company in the World.” The national press followed the Guard’s friendship tour closely. The Gate City Guard and its mission became known to people all over the country. The mission was pronounced a great success everywhere and was described even in the hostile Northern press as the final real move to reunite the states. Had there been a Nobel Peace Prize at that time, Captain Burke and the Gate city Guard would have deserved the reward, and justly so.

Many more visits between North and South were exchanged over the next decades, including Atlanta’s famous “Cotton States Exposition of 1895,” which has been planned as a continuation of Captain Burke’s Peace Marches. By 1910, it was decided that a monument to the first “Northern Mission” should be erected in Atlanta, the home of the Gate City Guard. The cost of the monument was quickly raised through private subscription. On October 10, 1911, 75,000 people watched a splendid parade of military units from all over America participate in dedication ceremonies which concluded with the presenting of the monument to the City of Atlanta by the Gate City Guard.

Each year, the Old Guard Battalion of the Gate City Guard conducts a rededication observance at the monument at 2:00 p.m. on the Saturday nearest October 10th. The public is invited. The Peace monument is located just inside Piedmont Park at the 14th Street entrance.

In spite of the healing effects of the Peace marches, the individual states of the Old Confederacy suffered as vassal states, dominated and controlled by the “Union” states from 1865 until WWII and in many ways until today, 2005.

Northern control of Congress; establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce discrimination freight rates; (a disguise tariff); and a vindictive Northern press made it nearly impossible for the South to survive as a viable part of the Republic; but the South did survive, because of the indomitable spirit of the people – black and white. Outstanding freedom fighters and patriotic institutions, and universities who fought so valiantly for freedom and equality were and in some cases still are:

• Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, who wrote the “New South” and lectured in many Northern cities about the problems and opportunities, the despair and the hopes, of the South.
• George Washington Carver at Tuskegee University, who developed farm products and procedures which helped to bring the south out of the devastation caused by the one-crop economy, the King Cotton Syndrome.
• The discovery of oil and natural gas in Texas and Louisiana.
• The development of Georgia Tech and other engineering and architectural institutions throughout the South, including the Universities of the Research Triangle in North Carolina.
• The “invention” of Coca-Cola, which created a tremendous “manufacturing” profit flow into Georgia; almost alone, making Atlanta the banking center of the South. Coca-Cola’s charitable and benevolent foundations helped to make Emory at Oxford into a great medical and liberal arts college, which indirectly brought to Atlanta, the National Center for Disease Control and the American Cancer Society.
• Robert (Bobby) Tyre Jones, who won the Grand Slam in Golf in 1930. He capitalized on his fame by establishing the world’s most prestigious golf tournament – The Masters, in Augusta.
• The founding of Delta Airlines with Atlanta as its headquarters, which, in turn brought other airlines to Atlanta, making Atlanta one of the Great Airline hubs of the world.
• William Hartsfield and his recognition of Atlanta as the strategic base for a national and world air transportation center.
• Dr. Hert (?) of the University of Georgia, for his work on “making paper from Georgia pines,” creating a new industry in the South, particularly Georgia. His work helped change worn out, eroding, cotton land to lush, oxygen-producing, soil-building pine forests. In the 1970s, there were over 150 million more pine trees growing in Georgia than there had been in the 1930s.
• World War I opened the eyes of million of Southern soldiers to the advances the North had made since 1865; but, “The War To End All Wars” also opened the eyes of millions of Northern soldiers who saw the South as it was, minus the propaganda that had been spread for over 50 years. Each side, at the level of “real people” liked what they saw and the healing process between the North and South really advanced. It was hard for a soldier from Georgia and one from New York, standing beside each other, knee-deep in mud, in a trench 25 yards from a deadly enemy, not to like each other and carry their likes back home when the war ended.
• World War II was a great economic stimulus to the South. Great training camps for the Army and Army Air Corps, Navy and Marines opened in almost every Southern state. Aircraft manufacturing and shipbuilding and support facilities created job opportunities for millions of people. World War II caused the South to prosper economically as never before, perhaps as much as the industrial North. In spite of great losses in our military forces, it began to appear that the South was no longer a colony of the North.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. for raising the issue of racial equality and opportunity to the highest plane; thereby opening a vast reserve of talent with opportunities for all, black and white, in harmony, tolerance and peace; marred only by extremists in both races and by the liberal northern media and even some of the southern media, either profiting from the strife or continuing the vendetta against the South.
• The unsung heroes of the south, who fought so hard to eliminate the "differential freight rates."