The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-08-01
A GENUINE BOOMER.

Rufus N. Rhodes, editor of the Birming- ham News, like 2 redhot volcano, emits the following in skeerday afternoons in- dustrial edition of his paper:
 TEN FOR ONE.
 The confident prophecy by one of Amer icas s most practical and successful men of affairs, who is familiar with industrial and commercial conditions everywhere on the globe, and especially in the mineral region of Alabama, that the market value of property in the Birmingham dis trict will be ten for one in less than ten years." is grandly re-assurlng, to put it gently.
 To the bold, persistent, buoyant toiler and developer it throbs joyfully with high ambitions gratified and thrills with de- light.
 Is not the prediction a conservative one?
 Does not the record of the past ten years provide a firm foundation for so bright a promise?
 Do not present conditions and the pleas ing prospect, stretching out into the days immediately to come, make assurance doubly sure?
 A decade ago, Birmingham was only dreaming that it might some time in a | misty future make the price of pig iron for the world. That dream was realized eight or nine years ago. Four trunk lines of railroads at the beginning of the decade now closing were l the arteries of the Birmingham districts commerce. Now six trunk lines are en- tering the district, and four more are coming in another year. And the Warrior has become an "arm of the sea-" Ten years ago there was "a water problem" Science and capital have now provided, if experts are to be trusted at al1 a supply of water for a community of a million people, which is absolutely pure. and to be furnished at reasonable rates.
 Ten years ago, the banks of Birming- ham were staggering under an overload of slow and bad loans, with total resources under two millions of dollars, deposits dwindling and cash balances from time to time sliding down below the legal limit. Today fattening colaterals secure all paper, deposits are steadily increasing and their cash resources aggregate more than twenty millions of dollars, plenty of money for all legitimate purposes for the next year or two at least. Coal mining was in it's infancy, a de- cade back, and a market for the black diamond" of the Birmingham district seemed to be dangerously narrow and uncertain. Now about eighteen millions of tons of local coal annually find ready consumption, innumerable new shafts are being sunk, and the construction of an isthmian canal, developing new markets in the Pacific ocean ports justifies the Birmingham coal trade in exclaiming with Monte Cristo: "The world is minev' Ten years ago the making of commer- cial steel in Birmingham was hoped for only by the sanguine boomer. Since then two great steel mills with an output of nearly two thousand tons day have been meeting competition in the open markets with rails and rods and wire and nails have scored many signal victories, and now the demand for Birmingham steel produces is greater than the supply. Three more steel plants will be constructed in less than eighteen months.
 Birmingham soon is going to wrest the sceptre of the Steel Empire from Pitts burg and the annals of her power, infiu- ence and glory will have but just begun to be writ.
 The past, in the light of the facts of the present and the promise of the future guarantees to a certainty a verification of the prediction of the wise man of the east
 'I have but one criticism to make of tho prophecy of ten for one," said & great railroad official last week, when he was told what the New Yorker had said, "and that is, 1t is drawn too mild ly. Nothing can prevent the Birmingham district in very few years from con- trolling the metal markets of both hemis- pheres and imagination can hardly pic- world Birmingham will then enjoy" God speed the dayi
 It is understood that the successful man of affairs" referred to in MT. Rhodes article Is James T. Woodward, president of the Hanover National bank of New York, and that the railroad man quoted is c. B. Ryan, general passenger agent of the Seaboard