 He served as a city council member, school board member, the police commissioner, the mayor of Atlanta, a bank president, and owner of several industrial enterprises.While he was not descended from the antebellum era aristocracy and had never owned a slave before emancipation, by 1897 "his enterprises controlled 1,206 of Georgia's 2,881 convict laborers, engaged in brick making, cutting cross ties, lumbering, railroad construction, and turpentining.