Manufactures.—Charleston's principal enter prises embrace fertilizers, lumber and timber, mineral waters and soda, bakeries, textiles, foun dries and machinery, printing and publishing, tobacco and cigars and flour and grist. There are also important manufactories of carriages and wagons, ice, medicine and rugs, baskets, boxes and furniture. The most important man ufacture is fertilizer, with lumber second and textiles third. Manufacturing statistics for 1917 are as follows: Plants, 190; capital, $29,268,513; annual products, $36,663,945; salaried persons, 801; wage earners, 14,437; paid in salaries and wages, $10,383,087.
As a distributing and wholesale point, Charleston is pre-eminent in its section. Whole sale establishments number 89, employing 1,528 wage earners. They pay wages and salaries of $1,135,602 and do an annual business of $30, 801,484. Principal lines are groceries, cement, lime and plaster, drugs, dry goods and notions. flour, fruit and produce, machinery and mill supplies, provisions, rice and shoes.
Buildings, Streets, Suburbs, etc.— Charles ton's long existence for an American city (founded 1670) and its position of leadership in all political movements as well as vital im portance in war time give it rich historical interest; and this, with its fine climate and its old garden-set mansions and outlying garden spots of rare beauty, make it one of the choicest and most popular Southern tourist resorts. In summer it attracts large numbers of visitors by reason of its beach resort, the Isle of Palms, where the scenes of Poe's Bug) are said to have been laid.
Charleston is unique among American cities in that while keeping up with the most modern in commercial and industrial progress, it has preserved all its historic places and features. Within its gates the student of history is pre sented opportunities to study every period in American life from 1700 to the present time The city is laid out generally at right angles, but with some picturesque irregularities in the streets; four of these, King street, the principal retail thoroughfare, Meeting street, the prin cipal wholesale and distributing thoroughfare, and Rutledge and Ashley avenues, run the en tire length of the city, north and south. King street ends in White Point Garden, a handsome wooded park containing monuments to Sergeant Jasper and his comrades and to William Gilmore Simms; the old gun from the Keokuk, the Phosphate Monument and a drinking fountain to the heroes of the Hurley who lost their lives in Charleston Harbor on the first sub marine boat ever built in America. White
Point Gardens, with its adjacent esplanade, the Battery, 1,500 feet long, is Charleston's greatest pride and beauty. The Battery gives a mag nificent view of the harbor and the forts. In the middle distance stands Fort Sumter; to the right the shores of Morris, James and John's islands, on which are located the lighthouse and United States quarantine station, and where formerly stood Fort Johnson, Battery Wagner and Cummings Point; in the distance to the left, the houses of Mount Pleasant, Sullivan's Island and the Isle of Palms, suburbs and beach resorts; nearer still, Castle Pinckney, on its little marsh island in the Cooper, and Fort Ripley. Adjoining the Battery is a development of recent years called the Boulevard. This is a section of land filled in from the river at a cost of about $400,000 and fronted by a beauti ful walk and drive 4,000 feet long. This, with the Battery, gives a continuous waterfront es planade of 5,500 feet or more than a mile.
Going north from the Battery, one finds at the juncture of Meeting and Broad streets several large public buildings. They are the county courthouse, a solid brick building; the city hall, an imposing structure entered by a double flight of steps and containing valuable paintings and relics; the United States post office, a four-story, $500,000, modern office building of Carolina granite, reputed to be the 'cleanest Federal building in the and Saint Michael's Church, the central point of all Charleston's historical associations. The United States custom house, near Market wharf on the Cooper River, is a superb struc ture of white marble costing some $3,400,000. In front of the city hill is Washington .Park or City Hall Park, containing a statue of Wil liam Pitt, erected before the Revolution — the British shot off one of the arms in 1780— and monuments to the Confederate dead, to General Beauregard, and a blot of Henry Timrod, the Charleston poet. Nearby is the old post-oliice building, where Washington and LaFayette were entertained, where Steve Bonnet and other pirates were imprisoned, where the forbidden tea imports were stored and whence the patriot Isaac Hayne was led to his execution by the British. The Charleston Chamber of Com merce, which is nearby, was founded in 1773 and is the second oldest civic and commercial body in America and the oldest city Chamber of Commerce.