The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-03-21
CONDITIONS IN
 BUILDING TRADE

Can the material men, contractors. architects of Birmingham live off prospects alone?" said Thomas l.. C. Vail yesterday. ''This is the question which Is paramount at the present time, as a great many have been pulling this stunt off for the past year or two. one of our local firms says business is good, in fact it is excellent, but that is not what hear in making my rounds of this our beautiful, hutsling, bustling Birmingham. In fact what business there is at the present time anything but profitable one; now understand the above is not from kicker or grouch,' but as it is facts let's face it and try to remedy the evil which exists.
 As I said above I am not 'grouch neither am l a pessimist, rather an op- timist; in fact l rather think more or the fellow who tells an optimistic lie than I do of the 'grouch' who tell pessi- mistic truths. Back to the point which wish every one to thoroughly understand can we expect to have and to hold first class contractors in Birmingham when they cannot get a first-class job at first-class price? Hardly. Now We know that we have the finest lot of architects
 
 where and Birmingham can truly be proud of them. have only been engaged in the building material business of Bir- mingham about three years, but before that time I was afforded an ample op- portunity of seeing how the architects or other cities generally treated material man. In this city we go in an architects office and we are greeted with pleasant good morning or good afternoon as the case might be and politely invited to sit down or asked our business in way that makes fellow feel that he is wei come even though he is not so fortunate as to have the article which will prove of interest to the architect at the time
 Again we come to the contractor. We have three kinds of contractors in Bir- mingham. The general contractor, the contractor who usually takes the sub- contracts from the. general contractor, and the third and last the yannigan con tractor He is the fellow we are after and the sooner he leaves Birmingham and seeks other fields the better it will be for all parties concerned. The contractors as rule are such gentlemen as it takes to make a city like Birmingham the me- tropolis that she is. The. contractor (gen- crab who goes after the larger job, the man who is higher up and does big things, 
 of our already beautiful city. Well if things were as they have been said to exist why did we lose two of our bess contractors in past year or two. Not solely because there was not a sufficient amount of building going on, but because they got enough of figuring and getting what Pat shot at Possibly the public who unfortunately is not so ,conversant with the contracting game will say thar they figured too much profit, but does any fair minded person who believes in Hive and let live think .05 per cent, 10 per cent or event 20 per cent is too much profit for the contractor on the average job2 Yes, 1t Is to some people and un- fortunately we have our full share of those some people in Birmingham. How eyer we still have majority of those who believe in living and allowing the other fellow to live. Nine cases out of ten the fellow who is willing to pay fair price for his work gets a better job for less money than the fellow who is