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145 9 Courting Armageddon The South stands at Armageddon. The battle is joined. We cannot make the slightest concession to the enemy in this dark and lamentable hour of struggle. —Marvin Griffin After a successful, albeit stressful, tax session, Marvin Griffin went on a series of business recruitment trips. Another aspect of Griffin’s economic plans for Georgia was a concerted effort to attract outside industry to the state. In fact, his most lasting legacy was that he was one of the first Georgia governors to serve as a goodwill ambassador for the state. In the mid1950s , industries, primarily in the northeast, were beginning to expand and move factories to areas of cheaper labor. Whenever possible, Griffin would travel and give speeches touting the advantages of relocating in Georgia. His gregarious nature certainly helped the state, putting business leaders at ease. Among the key points he stressed were the state’s moderate climate, abundant water, good roads—made possible by the tax increases—and cheap labor. In the spring of 1955, Griffin had sought and won a commitment from Carling Breweries to locate in the state if Georgia law were changed to give breweries a legal right to exist. Griffin successfully persuaded solons to change the law, paving the way for Carling’s entry into Georgia. For the remainder of his gubernatorial term, Griffin would continue to travel around the nation lobbying for new industry in the state. As he put it on one such trip, “The dreamy romantic old way of cotton plantations is gone forever.”1 One interesting story involving these trips took place when Griffin was invited to visit with Westinghouse executives in Pittsburgh. The corpora- 146 “Some of the People Who Ate My Barbecue Didn’t Vote for Me” tion was looking to expand and eventually built a factory in Athens. On this visit, Griffin and his aides were being entertained at a local country club, when the governor suddenly was nowhere to be found. A search was undertaken, and Griffin was discovered in the kitchen. He had caught a glimpse of a cook who had served in his unit in New Guinea. When his aides found him, Griffin and the cook were sitting in the kitchen catching up with each other and swapping war stories.2 Griffin’s trips were not reserved exclusively for industry seeking, however. In the fall of 1955, Griffin went to New York City to meet with Wall Street investment bankers to market bond sales for the rural roads authority. Ultimately, Griffin was successful in convincing the bankers to invest in the bond program. In late June, Griffin and three others had a brush with disaster. One evening, Griffin, his son, and Denmark Groover were traveling from the state capitol to the governor’s mansion. Griffin’s driver, Lowell Conner, was proceeding through a traffic light when an Atlanta city bus ran the red light, resulting in the governor’s car hitting the bus. No one was seriously injured in either the car or the bus, but Griffin did not come out unscathed. Griffin had been sitting in the front seat with Conner, while Groover was in the back seat directly behind the governor. When the accident occurred Groover went flying forward, and his knees hit Griffin in the rear end. When the men got out of the car, Griffin limped around and “walked off” his injury. He then told Groover, “Damn, Denny. Many people in Georgia would give anything to kick me in the ass!”3 ◆ When he was not traveling around the country on behalf of the state, Griffin was dealing with controversies at home. In July, a controversy arose which involved the purchase of “gas-savers,” devices designed to be placed in the fuel lines of engines and reduce the fuel consumption of boats and road vehicles. The decision to buy the devices was made by the highway department, who purchased the gas-savers from a Florida company. Interestingly , the person who lobbied for the purchase was John Sammons Bell, who was the chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party and later served on the Georgia Court of Appeals. Reportedly, Bell had a financial interest in the company.4 As it turned out, the gadgets did not work, and the Atlanta newspapers published several articles covering the purchase and the ineffectiveness of the gas-savers. In later years, this controversy became one of the things that people remembered most about alleged corruption in the Griffin administration. Yet no evidence...

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