Birmingham age-herald., 1895-03-01
HARpER,s ON THE SOUTH.


 Julian Ralph writes very entertainingly in the March number of Harper's Nigga zine about the "Industrial Region of Northern Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia.o His article is embeIlished with several illustrations, the only one drawn in Birmingham being the government building. He writes as follows of our in- dustrial and mineral interests:
 IA very sage writer upon the industrial history of the South has shown that early in the century it promised to lead the other sections of the country, but slavery ex- erted the effect of humbling the artisan be- heath the planter and the professional man in the general estimation. A wonderful agricultural prosperity was developed, and mechanical pursuits languished. Up to the time of the late war the South aid not enthrone cotton. The South then grew it's own meat and meal and flour. But after the war, when the most frightful poverty oppressed the region, the people turned to the exclusive cultivation of cotton, because that was the oniy staple that could be mortgsged h advance of the crop to give the planters the means of living until it could pe harvested. The poverty of the planters, their dependence on the negro and the shiftlessness of the ne- gro, which led him to favor cotton as the easiest crop to handle on shares and to bor- row money upon, were the causes or cot ton's eDthronement. Carpet bag rule and the demoralization of the peculiar labor Of the South added ten years to the period of Southern prostration, and it was not until 1880 that the present great industrial de- yelopment of that section began. It is therefore a growth of dozen years-a wonderful growth for so short a time. Alabama, where there was no iron indus- try when the war closed, except few little furnaces built by the Confederates to cast their cannon, now boasts of fifty three large plants. The name of the town of Bessemer is misleading. Basic steel has been made in the district from the ordi- nary foundry ore, and has been tested by the government and declared to be admira- ble. Southern iron competes in the North and East with the best foundry iron for stove plates and all sorts of foundry work. It ranks with the best Lehigh product, and is the favorite iron with the pipe, plough and stove makers of the East and North.
 'The Southern iron industry has suffered more severely than it should have done in the financial depression, because not enough of the iron product was utilized in home man u features. The transition from an agricultural to an iron making district has been brought about too suddenly, and was allowed to go to an extreme point. The time was one of money making in the iron industry, and the people were led to booming their new industry, so that nearly everyone went into the anufacture of pig iron and too few into the conversion of it Into manufactured goods. This will be fully understood when it is known that not a pound of hardware and not pound of steel boiler plate is made in the South. Where there is room for many large stove foundries there are yet but few small ones. But, as has been shown, the manu- factures are started. Such changes are brought about by one thing at time.
 "'The last census bulletin upon the iron and steel industry of tine South shows that in he ten years between 1880 and 1890 there has been remarkable growth oi these bus inesses, and that they have begun to follow a course of concentration, with the result that the capital invested in blast furnaces has increased from sixteen millions 10 thirty-three millions of dollars, while the money put into rolling mills and steel works has grown from eleven millions to seventeen millions. The output has in- creased enormously, and the quality of the product has greatly improved. In the amount of capital invested, Alabama is far in the lead, Virginia is second and West Virginia is third; but West Virginia is close to Alabama in the value of her prod ucts, because larger proportion of her iron and steel is worked into valuable grades of finished products. In 1880 the South produced per cent of the pig iron yield Of the whole country, but in 1890 she produced 19 per cent. Alabama shows the greatest increase in the blast furnace in- dus;ry during the decade, and Jefferson couniy-that In which Birmingham is situ- ated-is now the most important from mak- ing district in ths South. In 1880 there were but two establishments there, with a capital of one million; now there are ten such establishments, with capital of al- most nine millions of dollars.'' >~
 Ex- Gov. ROBERT B. LINDSAY of Tus-