Birmingham age-herald., 1894-11-30
A GREAT BLAZE!l The Birmingham Compress Now in Ashes. Fifteen Hundred Bales of Cotton Burned. Fire Laddies Make a Great Fight, But Against
 Hopeless Odds. The Fleecy Staple Fully ln- sured-The Compress
 Almost Total
 Loss.

The Birmingham compress, together with about 1500 bales of cotton, was de- stroyed by fire last night.
 The night watchman first discovered the fire in the boiler room aud tried to turn in an alarm, but could not manipulate the box. He then attempted to extinguish the blaze with few buckets full of water, but it had gained too much headway before he got 10 it, and soon the whole building was a mass of flames. Engineers in the rail- road yards near by began blowing their engine whistles, and with their usual rapid speed the fire department hastened to the cophagration, but too late to do any good.
 It was about 9:30 when the fire was first discovered, and by 10:30 the compress, sheds, floors and all the machinery were destroyed, and 150O bales of cotton were either burned or so badly damaged as to make almost a total loss.
 The flames ragged furiously and consumed tue timbers in very short time. The fire department did all that was possible for it to do, but the fire could not be controlled until almost all the combustible material had been consumed.
 The Birmingham compress was located between Morris avenue and the railroad tracks and Twenty seventh and Twenty eighth streets. It was owned by the Bir- mingham Compress company, recently organized corporation, and capitalized at S25, ,OOO. MT. L. T. Bradfield was the prin- cipal stock kholder, and associated with him was MT. Eugene Enslen. A new shed had recently been built at cost of between S200C and S3000.
 MT. Bradfeld was seen by an AGE HER AID reporter last night, to whom he stated that the compress was valued at between $27 ,O00 and BPS, 900 and had S50OO insurance on it.
 or two and was only put in operation again about two weeks ago, when lnman & Co. began shipping cotton there to be com pressed. IL had daily capacity of about eco bales, and in a few more days would have been pushed to it's utmost capacity to handle all the cotton sent there by Inman & Co.
 MT. Harris, the local agent of Inman & Co.,, informed an AGE HERALD reporter last night that his company had about 150O bales of cotton in the compress and warehouse, which was worth approxi- mately $50 bale, or between s4O, ,0O0 and S45 GOO. Inman & Co. have contract with syndicate insurance company by Whlcn all their cotton in the warehouse up to 700O bales is insured, so their loss will practi- cally amount to nothing. It may be possi- ble that several bales can be saved, though that is doubtful.
 Mir. Harris said the greatest loss his com pauy would suffer on account of the fire was that they would very likely have 10 discontinue shipments to Birmingham and divert their cotton to other points. He said, however, that an effort would proba- ply be made to arrange for having their cotton compressed here the remainder of this season. II that could not be done he a for them next season.
 He said Birmingham was too good To- cation to abandon, and Iuman Go. will not do so for longer period han the pres ent season at most. MT. Harris said his company had just commenced the ship ment of cotton hefe and that he had bought 2OOO bales only day or two ago, besides other smaller deals,