23. The NATIONAL STOCKYARDS,

Marietta St. and Brady Ave., NW., an area given over to ten independent dealers and one large commission firm, is the largest mule market in the country. Cows, hogs, and sheep are also important in the business of the market, and three large packing plants are operated near the yard. The rush season is from September through May, but wholesale auctions are held every Monday throughout the year and independent sales are negotiated every day in the week. Average annual sales are about 80,000 animals, representing a value of more than $10,000,000. The market brings more buyers to the city than any other Atlanta industry.

Lining both sides of Brady Avenue are the stables, large rambling structures of brick or frame, occasionally painted outside with pictures of prancing horses. All day trucks rumble in and out with loads of mules being brought in for sale or taken out to new owners. This delivery is supplemented by railroads, which have spur tracks leading into the yards. The auction barn, always filled with the smell of straw and sawdust, is a brick building, whitewashed inside, with a high ceiling broken by many skylights. The main floor is given over to while upper compartments built along the side walls are loaded with bales of hay and sacks of feed.

The auctions are noisy and exciting. Frisky young mules, led by attendants with long whips, prance into the arena before an auctioneer who stands on a raised platform. Buyers crowd in a semicircle around auctioneer and animals, breaking their ranks only to avoid being trampled by a too lively mule. As an animal is brought in, a ring-man checks to see that identification numbers are glued to its halter and Hank and announces the mule's age, weight, and other charactenstics, as well as calling attention to any defects such as cuts and bruises. The ringmaster states a basic bid; then the auctioneer, beating time on the counter, breaks into a chant that is almost unintelligible to newcomers. Voices are drowned in the chant, the crack of whips, and the stamping of hoofs, as buyers indicate their bids by nods or winks. As they are usually experts who know exactly what they want, the auction proceeds at a rapid pace—about one mule a minute —and as many as 800 mules have been sold in a single day. When a sale is closed, the information is conveyed through a speaking tube to a man who records the deal on a ledger and sends the animal to a specified stall.

At the time Atlanta was founded there was a great demand for mules in Georgia and other sections of the agricultural South, and the town's advantage as a distributing center early established it as a livestock market. Tanyards and slaughter pens were operating as early as 1848, but the first definite record of mule transactions is the listing of three livery and sales stables in the city directory of 1859. In 1866 the leading citizens of Marietta persuaded Jeremiah Huff to erect stables and pens around his house just off Marietta Street and to provide for owners and drovers bringing livestock to Atlanta for sale. At that time the mules were not shipped by railroad but were brought down on the hoof from the north Georgia mountains.

One of the most successful dealers of the years after the War between the States was John A. Miller, who set up his stables on Alabama Street and later moved to Marietta Street where he established the Miller Union Stock Yards. After his death in 1903 bis associate, T.B. Brady, purchased more than 30 acres of land between Marietta Street and Howell Mill Road. A street was cut and named for Brady, and a large frame hotel was erected to accommodate buyers and drovers. Shortly afterward, J.W. Patterson, prominent in the horse and mule business in Lexington, Kentucky, came to Atlanta and joined the firm.

In 1933 the J.F. Huyton Company moved here from Memphis, Tennessee. This long-established firm had held exclusive contracts to furnish horses and mules to the British Government during the Boer War and to the United States Government during the World War. The coming of this company to Atlanta, in addition to similar concerns already operating here, definitely established the city as the country's largest mule market.

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