The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-01-28
 Romance as 1T

|, company. as well as a director of the Woodward Iron company of Alabama.
 The Greatness of Alabama.
 The greater of the two states. in the iron and steel geography. is Alabama In fact. there are three things in which Alabama has no equal in any part of the United States-natural resources, cheap labor, and the convenient handling of raw materials In these. Alabama stands first. She stands second in the making of coke; third in the mining of ore and fourth in the production of pig Iron.
 The men who are behind Alabama claim to have no less than forty-two billion tons of coal in her mountain ranges enough to last the whole world for fifty years.
 "We have two hundred million tons more iron ore" they say, than the Unit ed States Steel corporation. On an ac- tual investment of only fifty million dol lars we have now in our possession a property worth two hundred and sixty five millions.
 In taking these figures we must make allowance for Alabama enthusiasm al though that enthusiasm is in itself one of the states best assets. Alabama does not need to exaggerate. The cold facts are big enough.
 Until recently, Alabama stood absolute ly alone. It was the stronghold of com petition, the despair of the consolidators the most ambitious and aggressive factor in the whole world of Iron and steel It was Alabama that pulled the cost of iron to It's lowest notch, smashed the ore pool, upset the prices of foundry iron and worried Pittsburg into nervous pros traton. And 1t is still Alabama that un- settles the future of steer and wakes up the steel trust from its dream of monop- oily.
 The Alabama iron business has no an- cient history. Thirty years ago Birming ham was a cornfield Five years later it became a village of rickety shacks To- day it is a fairly well built city, entered by seven railroads and equipped with more than a hundred miles of electric street railways. It stands like a great smoky sun surrounded by a dozen little smoky moons, and all united by the in- terlacing of a thousand miles Of mineral railroad. It's industrial army of twenty thousand. mostly negroes, made the United States richer by seventy-five mill lions in 1905. piling up twelve million tons of coal, sixteen hundred thousand tons of iron, and more than a hundred thous- and tons of steel rails. As yet 1t can scarcely be called manufacturing cen ter, as the goods 1t produces are mainly the raw materials for manufacturers. But Alabama has arrived where Pennsyl- vania was twenty-five years ago, all though the southern state started seven ty-fve years behind. Its resources are being developed by four large corpora tions, composed mainly of New York cap italists. All four are independent.
 There is not dollar of steel trust money in Alabama, although there are persistent Wall street rumors to the con trary. Neither is there any immediate probability that it's four largest com panies will consolidate. If they do, we shall then have the greater and the lesser steel trust-the one wholly in the north and the other mainly in the south the one depending on white labor and the other on black-the one based on skill and the other cheapness. Such will be the battle of the future, say some fthose who take long views of the iron and steel business.
 Natures Gift to Birmingham.
 Abram S. Hewitt, who had a wider