am a southerner to the manner born. For six generations my people
sleep in Georgia soil and for an hundred years my family have lived in
the Albany district the queenliest section of the far south that rests
resplendant as a jewel upon the snowy bosom of her royal mother Georgia
and as beautiful as a cluster of fragrant flowers that nestles in the
girdle of a lovely woman.

My imperial mother Georgia is a land of surpassing loveliness and thus
has for ages been the inspiration of poets and painters too.

The southerners dream of beauty is the magnolia and who can tint her
roses or paint the morning glory that points its purple bugle towards
the sky as though to sound the revelie for a waking world. No prima
donna has ever yet entertained the crowned heads of Europe with such
music as that divine melody with which the mocking bird greets the
coming dawn.

Ours is a land where skies bend blue and all nature seems to smile;
where mosses veil the infirmities of decrepit oaks and vines spring
unbidden from the ground to hide the scars of grey old walls; where the
grape-vine staggers from tree to tree as though drunk with the purple
juice of its own luscious fruit; where flowers lie at your plate on a
winter's day and the humblest laborer carries in his dusky hand flowers
fit to grace a May queen's crown.

As proud as I am of the beauties of Georgia I am prouder still of her
material and natural resources. We have a vast undeveloped empire within
whose borders there awaits the prospector such potential treasure as
would make the fabled wealth of Lydia's ancient king seem but a beggar's
trifle, and the consuming ambition of my life is to see these resources
developed to the fullest degree and then shall my imperial mother
Georgia shine as the brightest star that gleams in Columbia's diadem.

But of all the natural resources of Georgia there are none to be
compared to the possibilities in the development of our NATIONAL NUT the
Paper Shell Pecan.

The history of the paper shell pecan is but another example that "a
prophet is not without honor save in his own country," for native
Georgians failed to avail themselves of the opportunity at their door
and the credit for the development of Georgia's pecan industry belongs
to the far sighted men and women of the North. Then why should I not
feel grateful to such men and women as you believing as I do that the
paper shell pecan industry is destined to lead Dixie out of her
indu