The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-05

From the Nashville Banner.
 "HE large percentage of growth in
 the population of Birmingham is
 x remarkable, very creditable and strongly prophetic of the city's great fu- ture. Birmingham has those requisites of an industrial center that built the great English town from which it gets it's name and were also conducive to the growth of Pittsburg. Where iron and a fine quality of colsing coal exist in juxta- position 1t Is inevitable that furnaces rolling mills and all concomitant indus tries will be built. These things attract population and the big industrial town comes from such condition as plant comes from the seed in virgin soil
 That Birmingham must be big town has been literally prophesied since It's foundation in the early seventies. With the boom of the middle eighties its cer- tain and immediate greatness was screamed from the housetop and pro- claimed to the uttermost parts of the earth. There was a growth from some thing over 5000 population in 1880 to near ly 5000 in a little past the middle of the
 
 Rooms always are. It produced num- Der of corner-lot financiers and attracted many adventurers of the get-rich-quick class. all of whom were impediments to its solid growth. The financial depression of the latter eighties and early nineties took all the wind out of the inflated prices of real estate, and fortunes were lost faster than they had been made, while there was little advance in solid industry But the coal was still in the mines and Red mountain still lifted It's tible ore. The bustling. progressive world must have coal and iron, and great city where these natural conditions existed was still inevitable.
 There would have been a great city where Birmingham now is many years ago had the locality been anywhere in the English-speaking world except the south. The old south was occupied with cotton slaves and politics. and neglected it's industrial possibilities. The later south suffered from the turbulence and untoward conditions resulting from sec tional strife and social and industrial rev oution. It is only now that conditions in the south are becoming normal, and this section is moving on to that great destiny for which nature intended it. With the removal of these inpediments, Birmingham, of course, must grow.
 The growth indicated in the census fig ures is not all new population. There has been very liberal extension of the corporate limits. But all the population in Jones' valley from East Lake to Bes- semer has been attracted there by the conditions that made Birmingham, and 1t all is legitimately part of the great industrial center we know by that name, if not actually within one municipal gov ernment
 Birmingham has the advantage of Pittsburg in the proximity of its Iron supplies. The Pennsylvania city has abundance of coal, while it's iron has been mostly brought from the Lake Superior region. involving long haul, both by water and land. But the Pittsburs iron is of that quality that can be converted readily into steel by the Bessemer pro- cess, while Alabama ores are high in phosphate. The more expensive basic process is necessary for their reduction. This has been Birmingham's only handt- cap. If the ores there were of the same quality as those of the Massaba range. both the business and population of the town would now be double what they are.
 The writer of this article once heard the late Henry DeBardelsben. one of the builders of Birmingham and the greatest of it's original iron masters. say that if he could get free Cuban ore to use in his Birmingham furnaces he could easily compete with Pittsburg industries. This was at time when Birmingham was standing stoutly against the rest of the : south for 2 high protective tsriH, The