George M. Bailey
Buffalo has been generous in her praise of George M. Bailey, and his work for Buffalo. Few men have won a higher place in the esteem of her citizens.
He came here in December, 1883, to learn newspaper reporting on the Morning Express. He had spent seven years as an apprentice and journeyman printer in newspaper offices in Lockport and New York City, having left school to learn that trade when he was fourteen years of age. A year on the Express gave him a desire to own a paper, so he bought the Silver Creek (N.Y.) Local and conducted it for a year. But there was not enough money in it to satisfy him, so December, 1885, found him back in New York as a reporter on the Star, then owned by the Hon. William E. Dorsheimer. He reported the famous "boodle aldermen" trials for that paper, and did important work at police headquarters with Inspector Byrnes. After a year with the Star, Mr. Bailey joined the city staff of the New York Herald, but the death of his young wife and their first babe made him desire a change of surroundings. He came back to Buffalo as assistant city editor of the Express in 1887, and when the Buffalo Exposition was inaugurated in 1888 he was recommended by James N. Matthews to take charge of its press department. The Exposition was well advertised and was a success that year. At the close of the first year, in November, 1888, Mr. Bailey was authorized by the United States commission to the Paris Exposition to solicit exhibits and to take charge of them at Paris. As a result he was responsible for fifty-eight firms. There were sixty thousand exhibitors, but only thirty-three thousand awards, yet Mr. Bailey's eloquence before the juries of award won medals or diplomas for fifty-one of his firms. During the six months of the great exposition Mr. Bailey sent a syndicate news letter weekly to fourteen leading American journals. At the close of the Paris exposition he traveled through Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, England, Ireland and Wales, sending interesting letters to the Buffalo Express.
Returning after nearly a year in the old world, Mr. Bailey saw Buffalo through new eyes. He was struck, as never before, with her marvelous growth and wonderful future. He tried to tell about it in an article entitled "Ten Years in Buffalo," which appeared in the Express on January 12, 1891. It was a revelation. The edition was exhausted, and it was called for in pamphlet form and more than half a million copies were sold.
Then followed his "Illustrated Buffalo," by the Acme Publishing Company, New York, sixty-five thousand copies; his "Greater Buffalo," fifty-five thousand copies; "Buffalo: The City of Destiny," five editions, and his "Industrial Capitalization in Buffalo," now in press, all of which were of incalculable value in showing to outsiders the advantages of Buffalo as a point for investment, residence or business.
But Mr. Bailey's greatest success has been as an organizer of stock companies, which has been his principal work during 1891 and 1892. During that period he capitalized the Buffalo-Marion Land Company, sixteen thousand dollars; the Niagara Falls Tunnel Land Company, one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars; Buffalo Depew Land Company, fifteen thousand dollars; Depew Terminal Land Company, one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars; Bailey Land Investment Company, one hundred thousand dollars; also Low's Art Tile Soda Fountain Company, one hundred thousand dollars; the Hudor Lithia Water Company, twenty-five thousand dollars; LeRoy S. Oatman Produce Company, seventy-five thousand dollars; J.J. George Furniture Company, twenty-five thousand dollars, and the Gatling Town Site Company, with one million, one hundred thousand dollars capital stock, of which Mr. Bailey is president. By his enterprise he snatched the Art Tile Works away from Chicago, and the great Gatling Ordnance Company's steel plant away from Philadelphia. Mr. Bailey is but thirty years of age, and tells his friends that he has only just begun to work.
Hubbell, Mark S., ed., Our Police and Our City: The Official History of the Buffalo Police Department and a History of the City of Buffalo, with Biographies of Typical and Representative Citizens, [Buffalo, NY: Bensler & Wesley, 1893] (Buffalo and Erie County Public Library F129 B8H8), page 724 - 730, portrait page 731.