Within two or three years Elsas had switched to the new business of manufacturing cloth and paper bags and had joined forces with fellow German Jewish immigrant Isaac May.

Located in the former Atlanta slave market house, the company expanded during the 1870s; by the end of the decade, the firm consisted of a bleachery, print shop, and bag mill, and it employed between 100 and 160 workers, including women and children.

After receiving financial backing from Cincinnati banker Lewis Seasongood, the company began construction of a new complex of buildings on the south side of the Georgia Railroad line, east of downtown.

Within a few years it had outgrown the capacity of the existing buildings, resulting in the construction of a second mill on the Atlanta site in 1895, with more than 40,000 spindles.

Bag plants in New Orleans and St. Louis were bought during the 1890s, and mills in New York and Dallas began operation in the early years of the twentieth century.

Expansion of the Atlanta plant also continued throughout the first half of the twentieth century: offices, two picker buildings, and several warehouses were constructed during these years, and the Jacob Elsas Clinic and Nursery was established in the early 1940s.

Despite the early prosperity of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, the company was troubled by periods of labor unrest.

The strike gained national attention when the newly formed U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations sent representatives to Atlanta to gather testimonies in March 1915.

Elsas' activities also extended to philanthropy, particularly in the support of the Grand Opera House in Macon, the Hebrew Orphan's Home, and Grady Hospital in Atlanta.

Shown on live TV, an Atlanta Fire Department firefighter dangled by a cable from a helicopter in order to rescue him.

As the condominium craze swept through Atlanta in the early-2000s, Aderhold Properties seized the opportunity to renovate and convert three of the rental buildings into for-sale units naming the condos "The Stacks".

The Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill in Atlanta appears as a setting in the movie Driving Miss Daisy.