The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-09-17
EASTERN CAPITAL $
 FAITH IN SOUTH Large Investments in Iron and Steel Making Trades PREDICT UNUSUAL SUCCESS Financiers Believe That Phenomenal Business of the East Will
 Be Duplicated in the
 South.
PREDICT UNUSUAL SUCCESS

From the Baltimore Manufacturers Rec
 ord.
 The reorganization of the Southern Steel company, with an increase of cap italization, bonds, preferred and common stock included to S29. O0O.000 and the cleo ton of MT. Moss Taylor. vice president of the Lackawanna Steel company, and member of the firm of Kean Van Cortlandt & Co. bankers, New York, president, and MT. Oakleigh Thorne. pres ident of the Trust company of America, as one of the directors, illustrates the increasing appreciation on the part of financial interests in New York of the strength of the south's iron and steel mak- ing possibilities
 It likewise shows how the iron and steel and financial people of the east. who have seen something of the phenomenal advance in the values of eastern coal and iron properties, are showing by their works their faith in similar advance in the south. year or two ago such a capitalization as these strong financial in- terests have put on this company would have been regarded by the people of the south themselves as beyond fair valua- tion, but this only illustrates the fact that since the world began local people have rarely quite appreciated their own opportunities. It often takes the outside man to see and to seize the strategic ad- vantages of almost any new enterprise in any community. For instance, there Is scarcely a street railway system in any important city in the country which was organized and fathered by local people. Very generally outsiders saw the oppor- tunity and made the profit.
 Vast Ore Values.
 While the south has for years known of its vast stores of coal and iron. 1t has had comparatively little realization of their coming value. It's people simply would not grasp what the Manufacturers Record was preaching. It was but few years ago when an Alabama business man familiar with the coal and iron interests of the state, though not himself inter- ested in them, expressed to the writer his belief that intrinsically the stock of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad company was hardly worth 10 cents on the dollar; in fact he had an idea that the bonded indebtedness represented the whole value of the property; and hardly more than a year ago, standing in the office of an unusually well-informed broker at time when Tennessee stock was advancing towards $100 a share, an operator who thought that he knew some thing of business conditions ridlculed ''the wild speculation which was. responsible, In opinion, for putting Tennessee stock to such a figure.
 Turning to the speaker the writer said: rt.,1 the price of everything and the value of nothing I do not pretend to say what may be the speculative manipulation of the Tennessee stock nor what will be it's ups and downs, but I venture the state ment that intrinsically the stock is worth $200 a share and that In less than three or four years the world will come to realization of that fact"
 Only a little over a year ago Baltimore people who had every possible opportunity to learn something of the value of the stock of an Alabama coal and iron company which was controlled here, had so little faith in the future of coal and iron properties that they were un- willing to buy the stock at $10 share. which within a year had advanced to S70 or $S0 a share. Baltimore capitalists own ing a 25,000-acre tract of coal land in West Virginia sold it for BIO an acre about SIX ybdIS dSO, anu Mllnlil5 q lGW llOnlliS the buyer sold the timber on it for s20 an acre and has within the last few months refused $S0 an acre for the coal on 6000 acres of it.
 Foated Bonds.
 It was not so many years ago when one of the leading Iron companies of the south, finding 1t necessary to raise $75OO0O, was forced to sell $2,OO0,00o of Az per cent bonds for 371s cents on the dollar in order to secure money actually needed for de- velopment work, and the people who took the bonds did so only in order to try to save what they already had invested in the property. These bonds. of course. are now gilt edge, and s5000,000 of common stock which was mainly bonus stock, has since been sold for over $50 share. A prominent West virginlan once sold 3O0oo acres of Pocahontas coal land at 40 cents an acre now easily worth s150 an acre, and thought he was doing well.
 These are but a few of hundreds of illustrations known to everybody who has watched the material advancement of the south. It's. own people, sometimes by reason of doubt and Encouragement. sometimes by reason of poverty, have parted with much of their birthright for mess of pottage. It Is true that the development of these properties will fur nish employment to many thousands of hands and create vast wealth In which the south will of necessity largely share. but the time has come when the people of the south should themselves begin to realize something of the inherent value of their vast resources and take world-view of the expansion of business and of the ever increasing value of coal and iron and tim Der properties, in order that instead of selling such properties. and often vast ing what they receive in wild gambling in cotton In Wall street, they may come to q realization of the fact that there is no safer or better investment known to the business world than the coal and Iron and timber properties of the south.
 Southern people themselves should be- gin to understand something of the val uation which the northern iron. steel and moneved people are putting upon south ern properties as Illustrated in the capi- talization of the southern Steel company and in the present price of the stock of the Tennessee Coal and Iron company and other properties.
 Surplus Capital.
 The suprplus capital of the south can find at home in the purchase of coal. iron and timber properties, either for develop ment or to hold as an investment, far greater opportunities than anywhere else in the world. It Is true that for many years the iron interests of the south had