The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-02-10


 N IRMINGHAM, Ala. February E1N Some years ago, back in the late N sos, in fact, a man was arrested on Broadway for causing a disturbance. He was not violent in the least. On the contrary, he seemed to be moved sole ly by a spirit of goodwill toward men.
 Beaming b1andly upon all, he stood quietly on the sidewalk somewhere up Canal street way. and passed out the coin and currency of the republic to all of the moving throng who chose to ac- cept his bounty. Five dollar gold pieces were his favorite contributions
 His fame seemed to spread In the very air Grafters from the Bowery from the City Hall park and even from so far away as the Jersey City ferries swarmed in his direction. Even the police heard of It.
 That so good a thing should be loose and not protected" was against all their ethics. The wardmen were scandal ized. As for Broadway in his immediate vicinity traffic was well-nigh blocked. The disturber of the peace, still smiling affably and still ambitious to equalize
 
 the police station.
 Then his friends were heard from and his story came out He was a New Eng lander and he was just back from Bir- mingham, Ala, where he had been caught In the cyclone boom that was raging down here. He had in his pockets about enough to get under cover for one night when he got here. But, money! Money was blowing about like litter in the streets here in those days.
 You bought real estate one day on wind and sold it for s2O,OOO cash the next morning; and the fellow who bought it for $2O.OOO in the morning sold it for $5O,- 900 in the afternoon. The New Englander got into the whlrl, got rich so quickly that his brains became all added in the mix-up. With his pockets stuffed with money he made bee line for Broadway as so many under similar circumstances have done before. And, as compared with many others he was lucky in his experi- | ence there. He got into C. lunatic asylum 1 instead of into the morgue.
 But 1t was this lunatic who first made known to many New Workers the exist | the south, which from open fields out in farming country has been transformed into a commercial community of more than 15O0O0 inhabitants, all within the space of less than thirty years.
 Prior to 1871 no such place as Blrming- ham existed. It was not even a name on the map. There wasn't even so much as a railroad in all Jefferson county, of which Elyton, now to all interests and purposes an integral part of Birmingham, was then the county seat
 The region about here-a stretch about fifteen miles long by three or four wide was called Jones' Valley. Why Jones' Valley" instead of Smiths, Browns or Thompson's valley, nobody then knew or since has been able to find out. Only a few weeks ago the newspapers here start ed discussion as to who Jones was. It came to nothing. Nobody had ever seen Jones or heard of Jones, and the general verdict was that Jones was a myth.
 Yet Jones Valley it was, and Jones' Valley it Is now and ever shall be, and Jones Valley is one of the largest cen ters of population and manufacturing in- dustry in all the country east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio river. What 1t is destined to become within the next one or two decades Is not safe to prophecy unless you are prepared to commit yourself to figures which nobody who has not been here and studied condi- tions with his own eyes will believe.
 Put the city of Birmingham down for a population of over S00,O0O by the time the next census is taken and you will not be very wide of the mark. Indeed 1t Is only matter of the annexation of that which properly is her own even now that is required to bring Birmingham up to a population which will crowd every other city in the south for second place in point of size after New Orleans itself. and this annexation move, which has long been In mind here, is now beginning to take such definite form that 1t Is only : a question of a short time before 1t will be accomplished.
 As is the case with so many of these new-grown southern cities, the census figures of 1900 are absurdy inadequate in giving an idea of the actual magnitude of this great community. The United States census of 1900 gives Birmingham a population of sS,415, and that probably was very nearly correct for the corporate limits of the city at that time.
 Even the population of the corporate limits has grown In the interval between 1900 and 1903 to upward of 45,0O0. But to this figure there should be, and soon will be, added the population of no less than seventeen suburbs which go to make up the commercial unit, whose business Is all done through Birmingham and for which Birmingham Is as much the center as 1t is for the few blocks immediately surrounding the county courthouse or the city hall.
 These suburbs range In population from 1000, in the cases of Clifton and Lewis burg, to 5000 and 1000 In the cases of Ems ley and Pratt City. Their postoffices are little more than branches of the Birming- ham postoffice; their electric car service is the Birmingham service.
 They are now corporate entities, with few exceptions, and while their popula' tion. as given by the census, added to that of Birmingham proper, likewise as given by the census, foots up to only ss,- 25o, there is no account taken in these fig ures of the thousands of people who live and have their employment in the gaps between the imaginary lines which bound inc various corporations. These. added