The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIII ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY INTO ALABAMA (1886) AND ITS EARLY TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS How it all came about. Feuds behind the scenes. Tennesseean versus Tennesseean. Pratt Coal and Iron Company conveyed to Tennessee Company. R6sum6 of early history of celebrated company. Its origin in Cumberland Mountains. Discovery of coal on plateau. Role played by Lawyer Bilbo of Nashville. New York capitalists invest in property. Sewanee Mining Company incorporated. Construction of railroad "up to the clouds." First coal shipped 1856. Thousands of acres of mountain land donated to University of South by Tennessee Company. New charter obtained 1860 and name changed to Tennessee Coal and Railroad Company. Act of incorporation. Amendments to charter. Hard times ahead. War breaks out. Operations during Civil War. Legal tangles of company begin. Arthur St. Clair Colyar takes hold of the business. Young Alfred M. Shook gets his first job. How the company was floated on air. Services of A. T. Duncan and J. C. Warner enlisted. Reorganization takes place. Business men of Nashville step into the field. Colonel Shook's gallant rescue of Kate. Struggles of early days. Contract to work convicts made with State of Tennessee. More trouble. Colonel Colyar predicts great days ahead. Messrs. Shook and Warner learn how to build coke ovens and blast furnaces. Construction of the Fiery Gizzard. Visit of James Bowron, Sr., to the Tennessee Mountains. Start of Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company, Ltd. Description of Sequatchie valley. Control of Tennessee Company passes into new hands. Sketch of William Morrow. Organization of Sewanee Furnace Company. Young George B. McCormack enters service of company. Summary of operations in early eighteen-eighties. Association of Thomas O'Connor and William H. Cherry with company. John H. Inman acquires T. C. 1. stock. Enoch Ensley is left out of big deal and gets coal mine in Alabama. Nat Baxter, Jr., of Nashville appointed to official position. Trade with Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company effected. Interesting record of the Bowron family. Thomas Whitwell's connection. John Bull in the Southern iron business. Gradual progress of consolidated company. Tennessee Company begins to attract attention of New York Stock Exchange. Wall Street game commencers. Influence of George B. McCormack. The march to Alabama. T HE coming of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company into the Birmingham District in 1886 is perhaps the most significant event in Southern coal and iron records of this interesting year. The company's leap from the Cumberland Mountains into the Alabama field had origin in certain differences in matters of policy that occurred between Enoch Ensley and T. T. Hillman, and also between A. M. Shook and W. M. Duncan. FORMER CAPTAINS OF THE T. C. 1. COLONEL ALFRED MONTGOlrIERY SHOOK T. T. HILLMAN JAMES BOWRON, JR. ADVENT OF TENNESSEE COMPANY 1886 361 In the first place, Colonel Ensley and his Memphis associates having, in 1884, consolidated the various properties of the Pratt Coal and Coke Company, the Alice Furnace Company, and the Linn Iron Works, and thus formed the Pratt Coal and Iron Company, they held, as a matter of course, majority control, while Mr. Hillman, formerly the largest stockholder of the Alice Furnace Company, found that he was being gradually subordinated and had no voice whatsoever in the control or operation of his own blast furnaces. Now T. T. Hillman, having in him the blood of more than seven generations of Dutch iron workers, was not one to stand by and see himself ousted by " a Tennessee horse trader," as some of Ensley's enemies termed him. And, for instance, when Alice broke the record and turned out one hundred and fifty tons of pig iron, the largest daily run of any single blast furnace in the entire South, in 1886, the way Enoch Ensley took on the glory of it was enough to stir black blood. So Hillman brooded and figured; he saw himself in a cul-dc-sac, and saw that to relieve the situation he must either back out or else get behind the Ensley crowd and buy up the majority stock of the Pratt Coal and Iron Company. But he had not sufficient funds for the latter move. He knew, however, a man up in Nashville who, just about that time, was having troubles akin to his. This man was Colonel Shook, formerly general manager of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Oompany. He had been...