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Section XIII Recent Years CHAPTER 98 THE NlNETEEN-TWENTIES (1920) FE returning members of the A.E.F. found Atlanta, along with the rest of OF the country, legally dry, the Prohibition Amendment to the national constitution having taken effect on January 16, 1920. They discovered that it was a crime for a man to do more than sing How Dry I Am, though Atlanta and Georgia had previously known prohibition through local option laws. Atlanta entered the 20'swith a population of 200,616,1 though that figure was to be augmented in late 1920 by literally hundreds of discouraged cotton farmers. The boll weevil, working east from Texas and Mississippi, struck that year in Georgia, and the cotton yield plummeted, spelling economic disaster for thousands. But the local demand for labor was high then, and a farm hand could make five dollars a day in Atlanta at most anything, a jackleg carpenter up to ten. At the same time Negroes began pulling out by the trainload for work in the factories of Chicago, Pittsburgh and Detroit.2 While the national political pot was boiling in 1920, resulting in the election of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge to the two highest offices in the land, the year was also a busy one politically for Georgia. The race for the Georgia senatorship was between Hoke Smith, seeking re-election; Governor Hugh Dorsey, a proponent of the League of Nations, and Tom Watson, a bitter enemy of the League. The brunt of Watson's denunciation in this campaign, however, was directed not against the League, but the American Legion. The officers, he asserted, had abused the enlisted men in France. To the amazement of many, Watson won by a landslide.3 Four candidates entered the gubernatorial race of 1920. They were Thomas W. Hardwick, Clifford M. Walker, John N. Holder, and Walter R. Brown, the latter a practicing attorney in Atlanta since 1873. None of the candidates received a majority, but in a run-over Hardwick, allied with Watson again after ten years of enmity, won over Walker by a large majority. The two Toms ruled supreme in Georgia politics.4 The 1920Georgia senatorial campaign was probably the first in the State wherein the science of aviation was used in behalf of a candidate. It fell to the lot of James H. Elliott, a pioneer local aviation enthusiast and long-time Atlanta dealer in antiques, to spearhead the innovation. Some years later he wrote: ". . . In September, 1920, I accepted a contract for dropping circulars by plane for Hoke Smith, who was a candidate for senator in a heated race against Thomas E. Watson, and Hooper Alexander, who was a candidate for Congress against William D. Upshaw. I was to receive two hundred dollars for dropping circulars over Atlanta and down the Georgia Railroad to Conyers. The l 776 ATLANTA AND ITS ENVIRONS afternoon was dark and dreary, but even so we started out to make the trip. The clouds were hanging low and the visibility was very poor. Curry Lee and I started from Candler Field, flew to Snap Finger Creek, and followed the creek over to the Georgia Railroad, dropping circulars as we went. Then we followed the railroad to Stone Mountain, Lithonia, Conyers and Milstead. I had called my family at Conyers, so they were all out to see me. I greeted them from the air, waving and dropping circulars. The whole town turned out to see the sight and we flew low to give them a thrill. "On our trip coming back, when we neared Decatur, while I was straightening circulars, Curry Lee turned left instead of to the right and followed the Seaboard Railroad. When I noticed we were flying wrong, I looked at the gasoline gauge and it registered almost empty. We swooped down low, read the sign on the depot below and found out we were in Lawrenceville. Realizing we had but little gas and would have to land, we looked over several corn patches and pastures and chose the one we thought looked the most level. When we started up in the air again to come down for a landing and had reached an altitude of approximately five hundred feet, the motor cut out on us. We went into a nose dive, and fell in a corn patch about a mile from Lawrenceville depot, near the railroad. . . ."5 Neither aviator was seriously hurt, but both of their candidates lost. The city primary of...

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