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The Kennesaw Gazette,
PUBLISHED ON THE Ist AND 15th OF
EACH MONTH.
/
3>ovoted to the Material Interests and Attractions
for Tourists in the Mountainous Region of
Northern and Northwest Georgia,
REACHED BY
THE GREAT KENNESAW ROUTE:
Western and Atlantic Railroad:
Under the auspices of the Passenger Department,
BY
THE RECORD PUBLISHING COMPANY.
A. L. HARRIS, MANAGING EDITOR.
SUBSCRIPTION : $1 a year ; six months, 50 cts.
A limited number of acceptable adver
tisements will be inserted in Kennesaw
Gazette, which publishes a very large edi
tion twice a month, and it is safe to say
that it is read by more people than any
other paper in the South. Great numbers
are distributed in Atlanta, to citizens and
travelers, by the publishers and officials of
the Western ami Atlantic Railroad; and at
other points where The Great Kennesaw Houle
is represented. For space and terms ad
dress
©lje Beiiucsniu
Box 57 Atlanta, Ga.,
and you will receive a prompt response.
Atlanta,Ga., ZMstr’lr. 1,1887,
The Western A Atlantic’s Ma
rietta Folder.
The Western A Atlantic Railroad
company has just issued a new edition
of the “Marietta Folder.”
This is a forty-page pamphlet des
criptive of the climatic, scenic and
other advantages of Marietta as a sum
mer resort. There tire numerous illus
trations, several of which make their
first appearance in this copy of the
folder.
The increased number of people who
are resorting to Marietta is an evidence
of the wisdom of the Western A At
lantic Railroad Company in issuing
this folder.
It renders us somewhat liable to have
“chestnuts” called on us to say that
Marietta is the prettiest town in the
southeast, and is destined to be its
favorite spring-time and summer re
sort.
The present tremendous rush of
freight over the Western A Atlantic
has taxed that popular line to its
utmost. As the Train Dispatcher
remarked to another Western A At
lantic man a few days ago —“You can
form some idea of how heavy it is
when I tell you that we had to send
the old ‘General’ out to bring down
a freight train.”
“Well,” was the reply, “that’s what
you call bringing out the ‘preserves,’
it?”
All parties in South Carolina and
the eastern part of Georgia,, who desire
information relative to rates schedules,
etc., on freight business, and informa
tion about the best way to travel, etc.,
between Georgia and the Northwest,
will please call on, or write to George
M. Brown, Southeastern AgenT West
ern & Atlantic Railroad, whose address
is at Atlanta, Ga. He will take pleas
ure in answering all questions prompt
ly and in giving all the assistance pos
sible in his line.
The Kennesaw Route is the quickest.
“No Likee, No Takee.”
We suppose that this refers to the
average emigrant; if he does not like
the opposition route to the Western &
Atlantic and McKenzie then he won’t
take it; but, on the contrary, will
seek the Western & Atlantic and Mc-
Kenzie line, inasmuch as that route
has proven itself to be the shortest and
most reliable in time between Atlanta
j and Memphis.
We are led into this train of thought
by the notice of an interview under
the above title, which appeared in the
Arkansas Gazette, between a reporter
of that paper and the western passen
' ger agent of the opposition line to the
Western A Atlantic and McKenzie
route. He was endeavoring to ex
plain why it was that his route got.
laid out so completely on the holiday
excursion from Arkansas and Texas
to Atlanta and the Southeast, and
lavs stress on the fact that they had
* V
i arranged for five coaches to carry their
excursionists, but at nearly the last
moment they found that the swarm of
excursionists was so great that they
had either to stick them in cars like
cattle or provide other cars. He
says that they “argued that it was
barbarous to carry people almost half
across the continent without providing
seats.”
That’s right. There was not only
policy in that, but a strict construc
tion of the law would have forced
them to do it. He states that when
they finally got their excursion under
way, instead of having one engine and
five cars, they had two engines and
fifteen cars, —that is, there were about
seven cars to an engine.
Now, the, McKenzie route folks had
nine cars to tlfbir train, which we think
was a heavier one, therefore, than the
engine with seven or eight cars.
He says that the McKenzie line,
notwithstanding its advantages, did
not arrive in Atlanta far enough
ahead of him to justify any loud crow
ing.
This is very pretty talk ; but the
truth of the matter is that the Mc-
Kenzie line’s train with nine cars left
Memphis an hour and forty minutes
after the opposition trains, with seven
or eight cars to the engine, did, and
left Chattanooga about an hour and
three-quarters later, and yet arrived at
Atlanta two hours earlier than the
opposing train —the further fact being
that the excursionists who came by
the McKenzie and Western A Atlantic
arrived in Atlanta in time to make all
connections with the Georgia road, the
Central road, and the Richmond A
Danville road, while those who came
via the opposition line reached Atlanta
half an. hour after the last ‘morning
train on either of the three roadshad
gone —thus missing all of those con
nections.
The zealous passenger agent says in
his interview:
“If we had had no larger crowd
than our opposition we would have
reached Atlanta ‘on the dot’ as sure
as fate. They reached Atlanta sev
eral hours later than their advertised
time,”
THE KENNESAW GAZETTE.
Answering the last of the above
first, we will say that it is a misrepre
sentation, for the Western A Atlantic
train reached Atlanta exactly on its
advertised time; and so far as the
“larger crowd ” is concerned, it is a
well known fact that the Memphis A
Charleston train carried a majority of
its excursionists to Corinth, Grand
Junction and Decatur, from which
three points they went down connec
ting lines to their old homes in Mis
sissippi and Alabama, and when they
arrived at Chattanooga they had
scarcely any more people than the
McKenzie line brought to that
point; and of those who came south
ward to Atlanta the Western A Atlan
tic train brought the larger crowd.
The passenger agent, who was in
terviewed, says:
“Now I ask you to decide, which
would havtf done us the most injury—
to run our train through as advertised,
with all the coaches packed like’ sar
dies in a box, with the aisles and plat
forms crowded, keeping people in this
condition from twenty to thirty hours,
or, by taking time, to make all com
fortable, and thereby miss promised
connections.”
If the line intends to be enough like
a grasshopper to not look out for the
future, and should find itself with a
larger crowd on hand than it could
handle, and if all of those people were
going through the full length of its
rails instead of stopping at intermedi
ate points, which latter was the case,
however, then, we would in every re
spect answer in the affirmative; but
we would at the same time advise the
traveling public to go in future by
those lines which arrange beforehand to
accommodate as large a crowd as may
be thrown upon them at the last mo
ment, make, them all comfortable, and
then run if necessary sixty miles fur
ther than their competitors and even
then get to where they were going to
from two to twelve hours first.
The opposition line through its pas
senger agent feels “highly compliment
ed;” so does the McKenzie line and
Western A Atlantic ; the difference be
ing that the former line feels “compli
mented,” although it did fail to carry
out its promises, and the latter line feels
“complimented” because it did every
thing it promised the public.
In the meantime, we would like to
ask why it was that the opposition line
to the Western A Atlantic got beat in
point of time in the excursion the year
before the one which we have been re
ferring to, and with only about one
hundred and fifty people in their ex
cursion that time?
It is very strange, it seems to us, if
the opposition line to the Western A
Atlantic and McKenzie route is the
quickest line that it should have been
beaten on both the grand, occasions when
each line did its level best to show the
public what it could do.
As a final remark we will call atten
* -•.
tion to the concluding paragraph of
the opposition passenger agent’s inter
view.
“To what special feature do you
credit your road’s popularity ?”
“To the fact that we pledge ourselves
to never forget a friend, and we never
violate a pledge. We have the finest
and most extensive through-car service
in the United States. We run one
Pullman buffet sleeper from Kamas
City to Jacksonville, Fla.” etc.
Probably his company never does
forget a friend; but its record has been
that it has shown itself unable to carry
out its pledges in several instances.
We might bring forward the example
in the last sentence which we have quot
ed, about the Pullman buffet sleeper
from Kansas City to Jacksonville, Fla.
His company has been advertising—
that is, pledging the public, for some
two months past that they were run
ning that sleeper from Kansas City to
Jacksonville, when the truth of the mat
ter is that they have not been running it
to Jacksonville. The sleeper has been
stopped at Jesup, or has gone to Bruns
wick; has not been running regularly
to Jacksonville, (in fact, has only made
two trips to Jacksonville, both of which
were in the month of December,) and
does not run to Jacksonville — yet his com
pany pledges the people that it does run
that sleeper there, and in spite of its pro
fession that it “never violates a pledge,”
it is a notorious fact that it is not car
rying out that one.
Further comment as to the reliabili
ty of his line in its “pledges,” etc., is
unnecessary.
Inter-state Commerce Law.
The Inter-state Commerce bill has
been signed by the President, and is
now the law of the land. The West
ern A Atlantic Railroad company in-
to give this law a fair trial, ami
to endeavor to so comply with its con
ditions as to make it carry out the pur
poses of those who framed it, if it be
practicable to do so.
It will throw no obstacles in the way,
and will not endeavor by enforcing it
in a straight-laced manner to make it
odious. In other words, it proposes in
a loyal manner, now that it is the law
of the land, to demonstrate whether it
is a law which is practicable for the
requirements and purposes of com
merce.
We believe that nothing fairer than
this could be demanded by those who
framed the bill, or by the general pub
lic.
Winter tourists who stop at Marietta
can come to the theatre in Atlanta and
hear the best histrionic talent and re
turn to Marietta the same night.
Reaching Atlanta before the enter
tainment begins, they have ample time
alter it is over, to take the W. A A.
train and arrive in Marietta at late
bed-time.
The round trip “theatre-goer’s tick
et” Marietta to Atlanta and return
costs 50 cents. During last season
hundreds of people in Marietta availed
themselves of this cheap rate and the
convenient hours on which this sched
ule ran, and it is probable that the
number will be much greater this sea
son.
From the Marietta Journal: A large
number -of our-people are constant pat
rons of the theatre in Atlanta. A
crowd went to see Monte Cristo.
The Western and Atlantic railroad
runs more passenger trains over the
same rails than any other railroad in
the South.