1946
1946 T HE need for capital improvements in the metropolitan infrastructure convinced the voters of Atlanta and Fulton County to pass a $40.4 million joint bond issue. Similar efforts had failed several times in years past. But now the city would receive $20.4 million—$9 million for schools, $4.1 million for traffic improvements, $3 million for airport improvements , $1.7 million for libraries, $1 million for sewers, $600,000 for auditorium improvements, $500,000 for parks, $300,000 for fire station improvements , and $200,000 for each of the city's garages. The county figures, totaling $20 million, included: $12 million for traffic, $2.5 million for a courthouse annex, $2 million for sewers, $1 million each for auxiliary airports and parks, $500,000 for health and community centers, and $250,000 each for garbage disposal facilities and police and fire department improvements. The victory was hailed by Mayor Hartsfield and Robert L. MacDougall, chairman of the Citizens Bond Commission, as a mandate from the voters to keep metropolitan Atlanta the business, commercial, and educational center of the Southeast. Talk of the bond issue brought forth Dr. Thomas Dick Longino, whose 100th birthday was on September 7. He recalled that in 1899 he had introduced in Council a bond issue bill calling for $1 million for civic improvements . It did not pass, but five years later the growing city finally voted in favor of a $3 million issue for schools and Grady Hospital improvements. Bankers, as in years past, were much in the news in Atlanta in 1946 as their young men came back from the wars and their older men laid down their burdens. At the Trust Company, for instance, President Robert Strickland (51) died of cancer in early August, and two months later chairman of the board T. K. Glenn also passed away. The bank's top lawyer, John A. Sibley of the firm of King and Spalding, was named chairman shortly before Glenn's death, and he became president following Strickland's passing. One of his first moves was to bring George Craft, organizer of the Emory University School of Business, back into the bank's hierarchy. Among others Sibley brought in was Ivy Duggan, President Truman's chairman of the board of the Federal Land Bank, which handled billions of dollars in loans to farmers. Duggan took over the bank's agricultural development program. Sibley, in his efforts to get the bank going under new management, had the support of a board of directors representing some of the best business and financial brains in Atlanta. Among them were Ivan Allen, Sr., civic leader and businessman, who had developed his office supply business into a national concern; Charles H. Candler, former president of the Coca-Cola Company and son of Asa G. Candler; Carlyle Fraser, who founded the Genuine ATLANTA AND ENVIRONS, 1946 123 Parts Company; and John N. Goddard, president of the Conklin Tin Plate and Metal Company.1 Under the management of Sibley and his board and the team of officers they had in training, Trust Company made the transition from a war to a civilian economy with great success. By the end of 1947 the capital, surplus, and undivided profits had risen to over $8 million, and Marshall Hall, president , and George Craft, vice-president, took over a strong and vigorous institution . By 1949 the company decided it could go ahead with its plans for opening a branch office in Atlanta at West Peachtree and Third streets, a white-columned structure that was reminiscent of the old governor's mansion at Milledgeville. Here the first "drive-in" teller window in Atlanta was opened. Not all of the news in Atlanta during this time was joyfully onward and upward. In the Atlanta Journal Magazine of April 26, 1946, Mayor William B. Hartsfield described an increase injuvenile crime. He attributed it to a "wave of materialism sweeping over the whole country" and blamed "so-called progressive education" for the sudden upsurge in juvenile delinquency. Atlanta's junior hoodlums were both boys and girls, many in their teens, and some as young as twelve. Also, Hartsfield discovered, many were not poor, black, nor hungry. They were the sons and daughters of well-to-do Northsiders, and richly furnished homes on the affluent Northside were often robbed, ransacked , their fine furniture and objets d'art smashed and floors and carpets smeared with eggs and tomato ketchup. Hartsfield called for strong measures: (1) the construction of...
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