The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVII PRESENT DAY AFFAIRS OF BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT (continued). HISTORY OF THE T. C. I. (continued). ORGANIZATION OF ALABAMA CONSOLIDATED COAL AND IRON COMPANY Building of First Steel Mill. Mission of Paschal Shook to steel making centers. Constructlon of open-hearth furnaces recommended. Formation of Alabama Steel and Shipbuilding Company. General Rufus N. Rhodes elected on board of directors. First cast of steel made Thanksgiving Day, 1899. Bulls and bears again on the rampage over T. C. I. Stock. Resignation of Nat Baxter, Jr. Don H. Bacon of Minnesota elected president. Personnel of new directorate of T. C. I. Record of Mr. Bacon's service in northwest. Summary of his work in Birmingham . His appointment of Edwin Ball as manager of department of ore mines and quarries. Interesting career of Mr. Ball. Mining experiences in Lake Superior country. Description of red ore mines of Tennessee Company. General plan of reconstruction. Mr. Ball places mines on ur-to-date level. Introduction of modem machinery. Incorporation 0 Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron Company. Men associated in enterprise. Properties taken over. Pioneer builders and past associations. Biographical sketch of T. G. Bush. Affairs of historic old Shelby Iron Company. President Bush's connection with Clifton Iron Company. Calhoun and Talladega County interests. Backward glance over traveled roads. Introduction of Fred M. Jackson. Sketch of Standard Coal Company. Description of Alabama Consolidated holdings. Colonel Bush resigns presidency. Review of first administration. Spectacular career of Joseph H. Hoadley. Formation of International Power Company. A practical iron man assumes management of company. Guy R. Johnson enters Alabama field. Brief review of Mr. Johnson's work in Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. Administration of his Alabama Company. "IF the Carnegie people and all the rest can make first-class steel out of our iron, - why should n't we?" became the question uppermost in the minds of the officers of the Tennessee Company as orders for their basic iron kept coming in from the great steel companies of the North. Furthermore, the Tennessee Company was beginning to face the fact that instead of continuing to market their raw materials indefinitely they must finish their products. Having now acqu.ired by both building and purchase seventeen blast furnaces, - thirteen in Alabama and four in Tennessee, - all of which were fed by their own coal and iron ore mines, the question of marketing the tremendous amount of pig iron turned out by the furnaces became, 462 THE STORY OF COAL AND IRON IN ALABAMA according to Colonel Shook, " as serious as was the marketing of the large amount of fine or slack coal in the early days. While the coke ovens and blast furnaces solved the question of making use of the fine coal, another difficulty of greater proportions was marketing the pig iron. The only solution of this question was to convert the pig iron into steel." The great success achieved by George B. McCormack and A. E. Barton in the manufacture of Alice basic iron at once, as has been stated, pointed out the way. President Baxter instructed young Paschal Shook to visit the various steel works in the Pittsburg District, Cleveland, and St. Louis, to which the Tennessee Company was then selling basic iron, and ascertain the practices and methods in vogue and just what precise percentage of the T. C. I. product was used in the furnaces there. In young Mr. Shook's report, March 2, 1896, he states: "At the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Company, they are using our Alice basic pig in identicaily the same manner as that of their own manufacture and in about the same proportions. . . . Our iron gives them an acceptable mixture, in that the silicon being exceptionally low, it enables them to use to advantage their off-basic or off-Bessemer irons, containing from one to one and one half per cent silicon. The same remarks apply to all other users of our product." This report contained further suggestions and recommendations of interest and value to the company and strongly advocated the construction of open-hearth furnaces by the Tennessee Company. In this year pig iron was bringing a very low price, - six dollars per ton at the furnace. The manufacture of steel was recognized to be more than ever essential for the welfare of the entire district. At that very time the Birmingham rolling mills had under construction two small open-hearth furnaces designed to run almost exclusively on scrap. The experiments of the Henderson Company...