The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUOTION T HE State of Alabama is now generally regarded as the coming center of the iron and steel industry of North America, and the Birmingham District as the ultimate rival of the Pittsburg District. Since 1890 Alabama has, as a matter of fact, dictated the price of pig iron to the United States. According to the latest statistics she ranks first in the production of brown ore, third in the production of red hematite, and third in total production; she is third in the production of coke, fourth in that of pig iron, fifth in production of coal, and fifth in the manufacture of steel. That capital to a stupendous amount is being steadily invested year by year in the mineral region here is a simple commercial fact. As it happens there prevail in this region certain rather extraordinary conditions from the geological viewpoint: a combination of iron ore, coal, and limestone - all the materials for the manufacture of pig iron, and consequently for the manufacture of steel"- in such close proximity as to be practically in one locality. N"t to infer in the least that it is the "best" coal, the" best" ore, the" best" flux" in the world," but simply it is the combination of the three in such a way that results in the making of pig iron and steel are obtainable at low cost. Ways and means to commercial success in the iron and steel business in this particular section of the country appear, in short, such as to influence capital at home and abroad, and indeed to arouse a national curiosity and interest in things Alabamian. It is, therefore, mainly her coal and iron business that enables Alabama to stand upon the self-respecting basis, industrially speaking, that she is beginning to have to-day. Although called a cotton State pure and simple for over three generations (iron not being officially mentioned as a product of Alabama as late as the eighteen-seventies), yet a search into such fragmentary records as exist reveals the circumstance that iron making has actually been in progress in this State for nearly a hundred XXVlll INTRODUCTION years. A blast furnace, ,indeed, was built before Alabama was admitted to the Union. Coal mining operations, brown ore mining, forges, and furnaces antedate cotton mills. Yet no complete statistical or chronological table of events in the coal and iron record of Alabama or her sister States has ever been compiled; no connected historical narrative has ever before been attempted. Year after year, generation after generation, the facts have fed the winds, and full a century's work has gone unchronicled. Wherefore the ground is virgin soil. Out of origins far back and obscure, and apparently slight and incidental , has come the making of big modern business. The early chronicles of nearly all coal and iron companies operating in Alabama to-day have qualities of a peculiar historic interest, and of far other than commercial flavor, - roots, indeed, reaching deep almost as their mines, into the substrata and bed-rock of Alabama legend and history. Tangled and dry at first they may seem, for they are found at the end of far dark windings, but when uncovered to sunlight, they have not only freshness and vigor, but real significance in State records, and, in fact, in some instances a direct relationship to United States history. There is, for instance, a close connection with the United States Army and Navy, Confederate States Army and Navy, United States Senate and House of Representatives , the Confederate Congress, and with the railroad interests of the country, while there is scarcely a mineral section of the United States, or indeed of England, Scotland, and Wales, whose history is not in some way related - mainly through the workers in the field - with the mineral development of the South. Among these workers are descendants of old Dutch, Welsh, Scotch, English, and Cornish miners and iron-masters; of Irish scholars and soldiers; of English Puritans, Quakers, and French Huguenots; of early colonists of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia; and descendants of soldiers of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War. If ever an industry was set against a large background, one of stirring life and romance, it is the coal and iron business of Alabama. It is, indeed, of the State itself, - bone of its bone and blood of its blood. The history of the one fully told is the history of the...