The age-herald., 1899-11-05
HISTORY IF THE TENNESSEE GOAL,
 IRON AND RAILROAD COMPANY
Interesting View of the Great Cor poratlon and Birmingham District
 By a Staff Correspondent.

Iron company, the Alice Furnace company, linn Iron works, De Bardeleben Coal and Linn Iron works, De Bardeleben Coal and pany, and the Sheffield Coal Iron and Steel company, in Alabama In brief, to- day it owns 450,00 acres of land, of which 3O9,O0O acres are coal, 70,000 acres brown ore, and 1,000 acres red iron ore. It owns twen- ty, blast furnaces, with a daily capacity under normal circumstances of $500 tons Of pig iron; it operates twenty three col lieries with an aggregate daily output of l4,0O0 tons of coal; it possesses 3,556 coke ovens with daily capacity of 553O tons Of coke; 1t employs 14,000 workmen and pays them in cash every month, to the last cent remaining due on the first day of that month.
 "It would be uninteresting to the aver age reader to go through a catalogue of the company's property, and to read an enumeration of the number of locomotives, or miles of railroad track above ground; or miles of railroad track under ground; or of the scores of steam pumps blowing engines; the hundreds of subsidiary steam engines of electric motors, utilized in var ious ways for the multifaTious operations of the company, the mining of coal ven tilating mines, pumping at mines, trans pontation of workemen, transportation of iron ore and limestone, the loading of same on railroad cars, and their accumulation at the different blast furnaces. All of this IS routine, Wlrn Wnlcn many are IaiIlldr, and those who are not could not become so by the perusa1 of this letter
 ''It is most interesting to visit one of the company's many plants at Ensley Ca su- burb of Birmingham, connected by half dozen steam railways and electric car lines), where the company has laid out town that is rapidly filling up with people. In fact, the workmen to be employed at this point will for their needs require the construction of 1000 additional houses within the next twelve months. It is need less, therefore, to speak of the openings for the profitable use of capital and energy at such place; they suggest themselves. Everybody and everything is wanted there, from the housebuilder to the dentist; but the first is wanted more than the last, as the peaple have scarcely time to eat, let alone time to have their teeth picked
 "At this point one might follow car of coal. mined say from Pratt No. Slope, with Its 1000 tons per day output ,remem- boring that this is one of over twenty sim liar plants), and we will see that it is switched 400 yards to the by-product coke ovens, operated by the Semet-Solvay com- pany. This plant constructed at cost of ,O0O Is one of the four similar estab- llshments in the United States and instead Of the volatile part of the coal going off in smoke, to the discomfort of the local housekeepers and the detriment of their linen, the smoke is washed and the latter crystallized into sulphate of ammonia for fertilizing purposes, the tar being further manufactured into pitch and creosote The gas, after having been washed, purified and roooed or its by-products, is then carried