The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-02-10
STORY OF BIRMING HAM
 TOLD BY NEW YORK MAN

enormous demand for pig-iron that with the pig profits which have come from fl there has been no strong inclination ta eo into other forms of the working in- oustfy. The time for change in thls respect Is, however, near at hand and in the coming few years will be developed wide diversity of Birmingham's finished product, Iron and steel industry.
 The industries here are even now widely diversified. There is a wire, rod and nail mill, employing 1500 men, consuming from 15O to 300 tons of steel daily and turning out 5000 kegs of nails every twenty-four hours; there is a steel car plant under construction that will employ 1000 men and represents a capitalization of s60o.ooOi there Is a cast Iron pipe plant making pipe from inches to 72 inches in diame ter, employing 500 men and turning out 300 tons of pipe day; there are three other Iron pipe companies employing nearly 1000 men among them, all told; there are stove foundries. plough and agricultural works, boiler-malxing con- cerns, Corliss engine works, bolt and nut works two cotton factories two cotton seed oil mills chemical works, knitting mill overall and clothing factory, t-yo wagon factories and so on through all the gamut of nearly everything that can be imagined, and yet with something new and something big either just starting up or just looming in sight on the horizon.
 There is magnetism in Birmingham's big iron mountain right within the city gates. It is drawing wealth and wealth. producers hither from far and near A great metropolis of the great south is to be here-is here even now indeed
 And with all this heaping up of ma terial things it is not to be supposed that the attractive and the intellectual side of life is overlooked. From q mere min. ing camp that In 1873 was all but ex- terminated by a pestilence bred of disre- gard of all laws of sanitation, Birming. ham has grown to be finely drained, finely paved, handsome city, in which there are scores of fine churches, schools as good as any in the country four fine clubs, and above all society made up of refined men and women intelligently and Loyalty interested in all that goes to the elevation and betterment of the com munity.
 It is difficult to picture in mind the old as compared with the new-tne old boom- ing country, thinly settled and scanned with wallowing streaks of hub-deap mud called roads, the stagnation, the silence that brooded for generations over this vast treasure deposit of nature. All but impossible it is to conjure that vision up to your mind with all this war of in- dustry about you, the great city spread before your eyes, electric cars skmming over railroad lines 100 miles in length, and, stretching out through the country in all directions like broad, firm bands, macadamized roads that cover total of over 200 miles.
 It Is not quite to be wondered at per- haps that the poor. weak-headed fellow who was giving his money away on Broadway lost his wits in the first whirl and mad rushes of its early formative Gays and that, too. when to the excite ment of the time was added the delirium of that fierce attack of speculative fever which, 1t seems, all young and lusty cities must go through before they get their boise and the saving place of their ma tured senses.