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Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com
She Sttnes
gainesvilletimes.com
Sunday, November 18, 2018
JOHNNY VARDEMAN
vardemanl 956@att.net
‘Booster’ paper
praised assets
of Hall County
You could kind of tell what kind of com
munity Hall County would become in the
Gainesville News’s Booster Edition in the
summer of 1915.
The newspaper spoke glowingly of the
county’s attributes: its 150 miles of graded
and top-soiled roads (though few were
paved), its seven-mile street railroad
reaching as far as New Holland and Chat
tahoochee Park (the present American
Legion Post 7 property at the end of Riv
erside Drive), the county’s $9 million tax
digest, no debts or bonds and a $25,000
surplus, its 30,000 population and on and on
and on.
The community even boasted, “Its con
victs are well cared for and humanely
treated.” This was in the era of “chain
gangs,” when local governments forced
prisoners to work on roads and other proj
ects. They often were chained together and
poorly treated. Prison inmates are still used
as county labor, but the work isn’t as intense
and the treatment kinder.
Felix Jackson in 1915 was just building
what would become the Jackson Build
ing that still stands today in downtown
Gainesville. Town boosters boasted that it
would be the tallest such structure between
Atlanta and the Carolinas. The Chamber
of Commerce would occupy offices on its
ground floor.
Education was a primary attribute of
the community, both Brenau College and
Riverside Military Academy in full swing.
Students could attend Brenau for as little
as $300 a year, all expenses included. The
college advertised it had 86 pianos and two
pipe organs. Gainesville High School was
in what became known as the Main Street
School building with elementary students,
but there was talk of building a separate
building for high school students.
Industry was touted. Gainesville Cotton
Mill on the southside of town and New Hol
land on East Spring Street were textile
plants humming away, consuming 50,000
bales of cotton a year, a boon for area
farmers. In addition, B.H. Merck and W.F.
Hetrick were producing women’s hosiery
at a rapid pace. In a three-story building on
Maple Street, they would be putting out 100
dozen pairs of hose a day with plans to add
equipment to double production.
In addition to the street railroad, Hall
County was served by the Gainesville Mid
land, the Gainesville & Northwestern and
Southern Railway.
The chamber of commerce organized a
“motor tour” of Northeast Georgia to pro
mote Gainesville and Hall County. Only a
few years earlier, cars were a rare sight on
area roads, certainly a parade of them in
rural areas quite a novelty. The motorcade
included a dozen or more vehicles, includ
ing a truck that carried a band. It would stop
in 45 communities in 14 counties, including
Atlanta. People along the way would line
their streets and treat the “autoists,” as they
were called, with refreshments and gifts
with peaches being a popular item. Most of
the route was on dirt roads.
The caravan’s band would play at some
stops, and a chorus would sing, led by Ed
Barrett, who had to quit because he swal
lowed a plug of tobacco, according to the
newspaper.
The Booster Edition called Gainesville
“one of the most beautiful little cities in all
of Georgia. With her well-paved streets,
fine system of waterworks and street rail
ways, modern power plants from water of
the Chattahoochee River, her magnificent
schools and colleges, unusually handsome
church edifices, six active banks, prosper
ous wholesale and retail houses, immense
cotton mills and hosiery mill and various
other manufacturers, together with her
healthful altitude of more than 1,300 feet
and superior drainage and possessing three
lines of railways makes her an inviting field
for investment and place of residence.”
Further, the News commented, “There
is no depressing heat in the summer, the
winters are mild with occasional snows and
germ-destroying freezes.”
In other words, the Hall County com
munity was proud of itself and wanted the
whole region to know it.
This was on the cusp of World War I, and
while America didn’t enter it until the latter
stages, it had an impact on the community,
as did the Spanish flu pandemic, both of
which took many lives, including those who
were or might have become the commu
nity’s leaders.
Nevertheless, Hall County’s spirit, as
is evident today, prevailed and led to a
brighter future that present residents and
commercial enterprises enjoy.
In observance of Hall County’s 200th
year, more local history to come next week.
Johnny Vardeman is retired editor of The
Times whose column appears Sundays. He
can be reached at 2183 Pine Tree Circle NE,
Gainesville, GA. 30501; phone, 770-532-2326.
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE I Associated Press
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov.
7. Pelosi says she’s confident she will win enough support to be elected speaker of the House next year and that she is the
best person for the job.
Should the Democrats
retain Nancy Pelosi as
speaker of the House?
Dems don’t need
to replace her with
stronger progressive
BY MATTHEW T. HARRIGAN
Tribune News Service
The modern speaker of the House is not solely the
ideological leader of the majority party; nor is he or she
simply a presiding officer guiding floor
proceedings.
Rather, the position requires lead
ership in and across the institutional,
legislative and electoral arenas. Nancy
Pelosi remains the Democrat best suited
to fulfill that role.
First, the speaker leads the House of
Representatives as an institution within
a system of separated powers.
Nancy Pelosi has 30 years of House
experience, including service on the
powerful appropriations and intelligence
committees and as whip to her predeces
sor as leader, Dick Gephardt.
Her time in Congress has spanned six
presidents and all manner of unified
and divided government. Pelosi has the
institutional knowledge and experience
that a challenger would almost certainly
lack, along with an appreciation of the sharing of power
that defines our fragmented national government.
This is especially vital in a House that must work with
and be a check against a president who has little regard
for history and norms.
Second, the speaker possesses the responsibility of shep
herding important bills through Congress and into law.
Pelosi is widely lauded as a proficient legislative tactician
and wrangler of votes.
In her first term as speaker, with Republican President
George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009, Congress passed signifi
cant lobbying reform, a major farm and energy bill, and
several measures to address the financial crisis.
In the first two years of the Obama presidency, Pelosi
played a significant role in getting the president’s signa
ture legislative achievements over the finish line, includ
ing the Affordable Care Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay
Act, the 2009 fiscal stimulus, Dodd-Frank, and “Don’t Ask,
Don’t Tell” repeal.
Many of Pelosi’s progressive challengers cite the issues
addressed by these bills as cornerstones of their new
agenda, yet Pelosi herself achieved tangible results.
Third, modern speakers have taken the lead in helping
their parties win and maintain majorities. While detrac
tors may point to the Democrats’ eight-year stretch in the
minority, Pelosi did preside over the party’s initial return
to power in 2006, before Barack Obama became the face
of the party.
In her time as party leader, Pelosi has excelled as a
fundraiser, raking in millions in campaign contributions,
without which many of her would-be challengers would
have never made it to Washington.
The Nov. 6 elections also made it apparent that the pro
gressive wing of the party may not be the key to majority
status in the House.
While outspoken progressives grabbed the headlines,
the Democrats owe much of their actual seat gain to mod
erate victories in purple suburbs.
Achieving and maintaining the House majority requires
party leadership that is willing to forego ideological litmus
Nancy Pelosi is bad
for Democrats but
worse for America
BY JUSTIN HASKINS
Tribune News Service
Rep. Nancy Pelosi has been dreaming of returning to
her role as the speaker of the House of Representatives for
more than seven years. It appears she’s
finally going to get her second chance —
and Americans everywhere should be
nervous.
As speaker, Pelosi presided over some
of the worst years in modern American
history.
While President George W. Bush often
gets most of the blame, and unfairly
so, for the 2008 economic crash, few
remember Democrats had been running
Congress for nearly two years leading
up to the recession, when Pelosi was
the party’s most prominent and vocal
leader.
It was Pelosi, along with other Demo
cratic leaders like former Rep. Barney
Frank, who routinely called for reduc
ing home lending standards to achieve political goals
— directly contributing to the eventual collapse of the
financial market.
And according to former Financial Crisis Inquiry Com
mission member Peter Wallison, Pelosi orchestrated what
essentially amounts to a cover-up to hide the government’s
role in the crash.
Even worse, Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues
attempted to fix the disaster they were partially responsi
ble for by wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on a horrible
stimulus package.
The Pelosi-backed American Recovery and Reinvest
ment Act cost more than $800 billion, and according to
analysts at the American Enterprise Institute, George
Mason University’s Mercatus Center, Congressional Bud
get Office and many more, it produced few meaningful
results, as evidenced by the fact unemployment rose dra
matically in the wake of its passage.
Economist Peter Ferrara, my colleague at The Heart
land Institute, analyzed every economic crash and recov
ery over the past century, and found the Obama-Pelosi
policies of 2009 and 2010 created the slowest economic
recovery since the Great Depression.
Pelosi’s failures aren’t limited to economics, either. She
was also one of the chief advocates of the Affordable Care
Act, perhaps the single worst piece of health care legisla
tion in American history.
Not only did the ACA force millions of Americans out of
health insurance policies they liked — after being prom
ised repeatedly that wouldn’t happen — it also subjected
tens of millions of families to skyrocketing health insur
ance premiums and deductibles.
Premiums doubled from 2013 to 2017, and Health-
Pocket reports the average deductible for an Obamacare
Bronze family plan is a whopping $12,186 — well beyond
what most people can afford to spend in the midst of a
health care crisis.
Even after all of these failures, it appears Nancy Pelosi
hasn’t learned her lesson. She’s still saying the best way
to solve America’s health care challenges is to repair
Obamacare — an impossibility, since it’s fundamentally
and hopelessly flawed. And she wants to impose costly
: ;
Hi
Matthew
T. Harrigan
is Adjunct
Lecturer in the
Department
of Political
Science at
Santa Clara
University
Justin Haskins
is Executive
Editor and
Research
Fellow at The
Heartland
Institute
■ Please see HARRIGAN, 4D
■ Please see HASKINS, 4D
