No. 4.] FARMERS' NATIONAL CONGRESS. 423 



living - in unpainted wooden houses, which General Sherman, 

 on " his march to the sea," in 1864, laid in ashes. In 1895 

 it had an estimated population of one hundred and ten thou- 

 sand, one-third of whom were negroes. It is a great rail- 

 way centre, one of the largest and most progressive cities 

 of the South, its enterprise having won for it the name of 

 " the Chicago of the South." 



Northern and Western capital have greatly aided in its de- 

 velopment. Its fine public buildings, its more than seventy 

 miles of paved streets lighted by electricity and equipped 

 with electrical railways, its factories, machine shops and 

 foundries, its banking and commercial houses, its fine hotels 

 and residences, its pure water and system of drainage, its 

 colleges and schools, make it not only a thriving business 

 centre but a desirable place of residence and a city of refine- 

 ment and culture. 



It has seventy churches, a public-school system consisting 

 of twenty grammar, two high and several private schools. 

 Other educational institutions are the Atlanta University, 

 for the education of colored men and women ; Clarke Uni- 

 versity, for students without regard to sex or color, attached 

 to which is the Gammon theological department ; Spellman 

 Seminary, for women and girls ; a Baptist Seminary, a 

 School of Technology, Georgia Military Institute, two medi- 

 cal colleges, two business colleges and a young men's library 

 of some ten thousand volumes. 



It is to Atlanta, with the influences radiating from it, that 

 we may look for the new life and vigor for the regeneration 

 of the South, and create a new state of things for the whole 

 people — white and black — of the former slave States. No 

 other place in the South is freighted with such possibilities 

 for the good of that part of our country as are contained in 

 the wealth, enterprise, educational development and broad- 

 mindedness of the people of Atlanta. 



For location, salubrity of climate, good water, modern 

 conveniences and thrift, Atlanta surpasses the other cities 

 of the South. Her people Mere wise in discerning "the 

 day of her visitation/' and in welcoming in men and money 

 from the North and West to aid in raising from the ashes of 



