Part One. THE GENERAL BACKGROUND

The newcomer may believe he has caught its intrinsic spirit when he turns east from the Terminal Station into the bustling downtown section built about the flagpole at Five Points and cut in half by Peach-tree Street, Atlanta's principal thoroughfare. Here is a city of angular corners, of narrow, irregular streets crowded with traffic, of smoke, of hurrying figures, of high buildings forming a jagged and beautiful skyline, of darkly shadowed entrances and towers catching the sun, of soot-blackened granite and shining plate glass, of old walls crumbling while, to the clatter of riveters, new walls spring up toward the sky.

Atlanta has almost everything except age. Only a century has passed since the first railroad builders dug and hammered the town into being, and through its years of tumultuous history it has grown into a city too rapidly to look well to its monuments. In order to find the landmarks of Atlanta's earliest history, it is necessary to go down below the downtown streets into a dark underground, eternally roaring with the noise of the railroad trams that gave birth to the settlement. Here, encased in a protecting fence of crossties, stands the "zero milepost", set up in 1842 to mark the eastern terminus of the Western & Atlantic Railroad. In this region the pioneers cleared the brush and built rough shanties. Now the forest paths have been hidden by cobblestones and steel rails gleaming in every direction, and the five viaducts overhead hum with the echo of passing trains. Under the sheds passengers get on and off trains to an intermittent accompaniment of other noises, the thud of mail sacks being thrown to the platform, the creak of wheels- as the baggage carts are pushed by.men in overalls, and the trainmen's recurrent call of "All aboard!"

Up to the level of Peachtree Street again and east of Five Points is another section that is old—for this vigorous and youthful city. This area, encircling the Capitol for several blocks, was the heart of fashionable Atlanta until the middle 188o's when commerce broke into the lines of handsome Victorian dwellings. These houses, looming spacious behind their green lawns, were mostly erected after the Greek Revival period and they bore the more romantic ornamentation of a later day: ironwork, cupolas, bay windows, and turrets with pointed roofs. Many of these still survive, but shabbily as cheap lodging houses. Nevertheless, the neighborhood about Capitol Square still has a measure of its old dignity because of many large trees and some of the older churches that stoutly hold their ground. Here also are some of the older synagogues, and occasionally a rabbi, bearded, a black skull-cap set upon his gray locks, walks by with gravely folded hands. The kosher markets along Washington Street and Capitol Avenue are thronged with Jewish housewives in aprons and shawls, dark faces glowing and hands gesturing volubly as they fill their baskets with fish, chickens, and vegetables. Scarcely less animated are the Greek peddlers with their pushcarts heaped with peanuts or rich fruits, laughing and bickering along the pavements. Despite the imposing mass of the Capitol and the tanks and smokestacks of factories farther eastward, this section belongs neither to the law-maker nor the industrialist. It belongs rather to the little foreign groups that have found their way to this city—Greek, Syrian, and Italian.

Some of the residential sections have an air that is completely unexpected. Only a few minutes drive from the Terminal Station is West End, whose oak-shaded sidewalks and roomy, balustraded frame houses suggest a small Southern town of the turn of the century. Much of this atmosphere of neighborly gossip and front porch rockers may be caught in other suburbs or near-by towns, College Park, Hapeville, or Decatur. Nearer the hub of the city this spirit may seem to be dead, but sometimes it has only gone from the front porch to the garden in the back yard. In every part of the city the garden is an important element of family life, for Atlanta has many days of warmth and sunshine. Although rainfall is abundant, there is no long rainy season, and even the cold snaps of winter are varied by many mild days.

Despite outward appearances, the many quarters of the city are neither isolated from nor independent of each other. Such busy little commercial centers as those around Tenth Street, Buckhead, or Little Five Points may seem to offer everything the housewife could need, but as likely as not she will choose to do her shopping farther from her home. Even the manufacturing town of East Point or the industrial villages of Scottdale or the Exposition Mills are not self-sufficing units but integral parts of the metropolitan area.

Atlanta's large Negro population, though segregated, is scattered all over town in large or small pockets. The most populous business thoroughfare is Decatur Street, running eastward between rows of pawnshops with crowded windows, restaurants emitting the sharp smell of frying fish, and clothing stores with suits and overcoats hung over ropes along the pavements. Here the scene is full of animation and there is an eternal symphony of gay noises—the crack of rifles in the shooting galleries, the wooden clatter of balls in the poolrooms, the thin, fast music of sidewalk phonographs, and always the voices, loud but musical.

Auburn Avenue is a far quieter Negro business district of decorous hotels and office buildings. There are evidences of still greater refinement along Ashby Street and in the vicinity of Atlanta University, where many of the more prosperous Negroes maintain attractive homes. Atlanta is the world's largest center for Negro education, and the colleges are constantly taking a more important place in municipal life. Perhaps no other Southern city shows so great a divergence, not only economic but educational and social, in the condition of its Negro citizens. The university set and their friends maintain a good living standard for themselves and work toward the improvement of their race. But the poorer Negroes live squalidly along their own streets which appear abruptly in all parts of the city; here the ramshackle wooden shanties and rooming houses are crowded with many families and the streets are noisy with the cries of little ragged brown children.

A city so large, so scattered, and so diverse in its many components ends itself only with difficulty to general statement. A few such comments can be made, of course, but they must be advanced cautiously and with due regard for dissimilar points of view. For example, national publications have frequently singled out Atlanta women for their beauty and smart clothes, but other observers flatly declare that the girls here are no prettier than American girls anywhere. The question of amusements is another case in point. Many a traveling salesman stranded here without acquaintances complains that there are no night clubs, no regular theatrical performances, and no outstanding restaurants, and that there is nothing to do but go to one motion picture after another. Yet girls of debutante age visiting here during the gay winter season declare that 24 hours are not enough for all the luncheons, dinners, teas, and dances that are showered down so lavishly. There is always an abundance of club life for both the dancers and the golf and tennis crowd. In a few sets there is more entertaining in the club than in the home, but most Atlanta hostesses come into their own most truly and graciously in their own households and at their own tables. There is comparatively little entertaining at the hotels, which are essentially commercial.

Indeed, one of the few just generalizations that can be made is that Atlanta is a predominantly commercial city. Although it is the State capital, it is too large to be dominated by legislative and judicial functions. It is the same with educational affairs: Georgia Tech, Emory, Oglethorpe, Agnes Scott, and Atlanta University are exceedingly important to several large groups without making Atlanta a college town. Nor does industry predominate, although Atlanta wealth is derived from sources ranging from cotton goods to bottled drinks. It is business that takes first place.

Any newcomer feels this enveloping importance of commerce as soon as he enters a large office in the Hurt Building, the Candler Building, the William-Oliver Building, or any of the national banks. He becomes aware of an electric quickness in the tempo; officials and clerks, though cordial, are not inclined to waste time. There is little of the leisurely personal touch that is characteristic of business conferences in smaller Southern communities. Atlanta offices are conducted with the method and manner of the metropolitan East. It is the same with the shops. Stock, equipment, and decorations are smartly modern, and buying is brisk.

Since Atlanta is the Southeastern center for distribution offices of large national concerns, there is a constantly shifting population of salesmen and district managers. These men and their families, settling briefly in hotels and apartment houses, seldom stay long enough to become a permanent part of the city. Atlanta businessmen still form the essential nucleus. Many of the names that were prominent in the commercial life of pioneer Atlanta are still prominent, even though the stores and offices that bear them are frequently owned by New York firms. Although Atlanta's geographical situation is deep in the South, busy train and airplane service ties it closely to the big cities of the

Eastern Seaboard and draws it into the orbit of national commerce. From its earliest settlement, this community has pushed its development by vigorous enterprise. Not aristocratic cotton planters but energetic railroad men gave it life, and it was this spirit of dogged survival that brought recovery and increased power after the town had been burned by General Sherman's destroying forces. And this spirit still animates Atlanta.

There is an abundant enthusiasm for music and the other arts; there is plenty of graciousness and gentility. But in the final analysis these qualities are less salient than those that twentieth-century language designates as drive or punch, Atlanta is alert and aggressive— a true city of the Modern South.

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