Textile Map of the COTTON STATES. Showing the Cotton Belt, Piedmont Section and Location of all Southern Cotton Mill Cities and Towns
- Title:
- Textile Map of the COTTON STATES. Showing the Cotton Belt, Piedmont Section and Location of all Southern Cotton Mill Cities and Towns
- Alternate Title:
- Textile Map of the COTTON STATES.
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Smith, Telamon Cuyler [Telamon Smith Cuyler]
- Date:
- 1901
- Posted Date:
- 2024-04-25
- ID Number:
- 2508.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2508_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1900 - 1919
- Subject:
- Advertising & Promotion
Money & Finance - Measurement:
- 28 x 43 sheet (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This is a promotional map addressed to members of the Southern Industrial Conference in Philadelphia in June 1901. It shows the relative paucity of cotton mills across the principal cotton growing regions of the South, noting that 76 percent of the world's cotton crop is grown in this area, but the South consumes only 6 percent of it. Accordingly, "There is Room for More Cotton Mills in the South!" This is followed by the punch line: "I have local capitalists in Southern cities and towns with $30,000 to $200,000, ready to join experienced Eastern spinners and build mills." The map was created by Cuyler Smith, whose name appears at the lower left with business addresses in Atlanta and New York.
Telamon Cruger Cuyler Smith came from a distinguished Georgia family. He was "colorful and unusual . . . . a learned man with passionate interests, particularly . . . the history of early Georgia." Jones County History & Heritage 2005 (JCHH), 2. He was "a well-known historian, lawyer and writer" who had "an exotic career as . . . world traveler, writer, and social leader." Moore 1967, 474, 475. He was "debonair and popular. . . . a dashing figure, a bon vivant to the last." Williford 1962, 103-04.
Smith graduated with a law degree from the University of Georgia in 1893, and at the time this map was produced, he was working with his father in the prosperous Atlanta firm identified at the lower right, Henry H. Smith & Co., Cotton Buyers. Later in 1900, at the Annual Convention of the American Bankers Association, he was introduced as "a young Georgian who is devoting his talent to the development of this industry in the South." Reynolds 1900, 78. In 1901, he published an article in a national magazine extolling the cotton trade and closing with a heavy-handed promotional pitch: "As money-makers, these cotton mills are the marvel of the decade" with "annual earnings . . . from fifteen to sixty-two percent." Smith, T. Cuyler, "The Realm of Cotton," Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, November, 1901, p. 136.
Smith married the San Francisco "daughter of a gold miner who had struck it rich in '49 . . . at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1900 before a notable assemblage of New York and Georgia society." Williford 1962, 103. In 1902, they established a second home in New York, and in 1904, following the death of his father, he changed his name to Telamon Cruger Smith Cuyler, to perpetuate the distinguished Cuyler name of his mother. (Some have suggested that his new wife provoked the change.) In the years that followed, he and his wife traveled between Atlanta, New York, London and Paris, where they lived for extended periods.
Little is known of Cuyler's business affairs between 1901 and a bizarre three-day episode in 1911. According to newspaper reports, his mind was "said to be impaired because of recent financial reverses," including notices requiring seven Atlanta banks to freeze his assets. After his "peculiar actions" on a train passing through North Carolina "attracted marked attention from his fellow passengers," he jumped from the train while it was moving, leaving behind his personal effects. He was apprehended by local authorities as suspicious but released when he posted $22,000 in Rock Island Railroad bonds as security. He traveled to another town and entered a hospital, saying that "detectives were on his trail and if they caught him and attached his bonds, he would be a pauper." As a sheriff was bringing him by train to Shelby, NC, Cuyler again "disappeared mysteriously." His friend and lawyer arrived from Atlanta, and after a "lively chase" of over 100 miles "through the Carolina mountains," he was found near the Tennessee border, returned to Atlanta, and "placed temporarily in a sanitorium." Wilmington (NC) Morning Star, February 1, 1911, p.1; February 2, 1911, p. 1; February 3, 1911, p.4.
In 1912, Cuyler's wife returned to her family home in San Francisco with their two children and secured a divorce. The following year, Cuyler sued his former mother-in-law for "alienation of affection" by coercing her daughter to leave him and sought damages of $500,000 (more than $13 million in 2021 dollars). New York Times, November 23, 1913, p. 2. Isabella Barton responded with "a scathing arraignment of the plaintiff," accusing him of "conduct that runs from petty lying to brutality and gross immorality." The response alleged Cuyler's "improper conduct with other women," providing three specific names and extensive details. It also accused Cuyler of "sponging upon Mrs. Barton and of begging money from his wife," again with much detail. New York Times, May 15, 1914, p. 8.
In his later years, Cuyler lived on his plantation, “Sunshine,” near Wayside Georgia, where he was “certainly the only man . . . who habitually wore a stylish white suit with white socks and white shoes, even to walk several miles on dusty red clay roads . . . into town.” JCHH 2.
Whatever else he was or wasn't, Telamon Cuyler was a serious collector of materials relating to the history of Georgia and the South. In 1937, when the director George Cukor was doing research in preparation for filming "Gone with the Wind," Cuyler "served as local expert and tour guide," and "his great-uncle’s Confederate uniform was used as a model for the costumers." Ibid. (For a charming photo of Cuyler – wearing the uniform – with Cukor, see https://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/turningpoint/ahc/cw/pdfs/ahc0197v-236.pdf, accessed January 14, 2022.) "Cuyler authored sixty privately printed works on Southern, Confederate, and Georgia history. Upon his death in 1951, his large collection of historical documents and photographs were willed to the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library" at the University of Georgia. https://sclfind.libs.uga.edu/sclfind/view?docId=ead/ms1170-series5.xml#adminlink, accessed January 14, 2022.
Cornell University Library is pleased to present this digital collection of Persuasive Maps, the originals of which have been collected and described by the private collector PJ Mode. The descriptive information in the “Collector’s Notes” has been supplied by Mr. Mode and does not necessarily reflect the views of Cornell University. - Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.