The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-09-03
Nw'IVYl NVl IEl IaI

'ss8"f WI 'seflfN igI ny As
 Nothing, as I conceive 1t, can b,
 more tedious than a twice-told tai, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy mar | except it be, perhaps, contribution
 to newspaper concerning that which
 Is obvious. Devotees of Dickens vii
 recall the startling announcement
 made occasionally in that deep, expres.
 slonless, inflectionless, soulless, emo. | tionless voice of Mir. Els aunt, one ot
 which: There are milestones on the Dover road" will arouse the most | careless reader to a realization of the | fact that he has been entertaining ir | his mind certain trains of thought be- tween which and the matter of the page before him there Is no possible connection.
 AS l propose herein to digress from
 the rule inferable from the admission above made, it is but fair to those who
 have so graciously received my con-
 tributions of late that I do so mani testly and with manifest reason and without any attempt to impose upon
 them. My only apology shall be that, being myself a citizen of Birmingham,
 l am but ascertaining my own true
 
 waybi1 of prosperity when I take an account of the affairs of the city or attempt to locate her exact position. Quite emotionally speaking, Birming
 ham Is somewhat in the predicament of an animal in hollow log or stump, wherein 1t is being thoroughly smoked and she is about ready to "come out" and come she will, for she can resist this suffocation no longer. It is but natural that like the poor beast in con- finement, to which the wherefores of the situation are inexplicable, she should cogitate the reasons for the stifling atmosphere to which she Is being subjected.
 Heretofore, and whenever a depres- sion stole over us, the citizen was wont to look along First avenue to- ward the Sloss furnace, and if the ab sence was noted of that smoke horo- logue forth issuing from those stacks which usually proclaims the hour of Birmingham's day of progress and prosperity, the citizen would console himself with this as a sufficient ex- planation and patiently abide the re- lighting of the fires upon which he relied to dispel the clouds of business depression overhanging the city, and which would usher in the dawning of the morning when the sun of pros perity would stand tip-toe on the crest of Red mountain and smile upon the valley.
 The mariners of the Mediterranean never relied more confidently upon the fires of Stromboli as the barometer of their adventures than the citizens Of Birmingham had learned to rely upon the smoke and the glare and the sigh ing of our iron furnaces as tidings of great joy to come or to abide with us, and so long had this continued and so coincident were the material pros perity of the city and these harbingers thereof. that species of apostacy had taken possession of them and they for got the doctrines and teachings of their daddies and had become at- tached to a false worship
 Deep rumblings and grumblings were audible to the attentive ear whenever anything occurred that gave rise to apprehensions that the fires of Bir- minghams industries were to be put out or banked and the curse of this organism has been about done up in convenient form to hurl at the head of our representative in the Senate for presuming to adhere to the old faith, and our little bantam representative in Congress who appears to be as pugna- cfous as a Barbary cock Is having a pair of well protected trust-made gaffs shaped and curved and sharpened and fitted on a champion to oppose him in the pit. Birmingham has danced to the tunes discoursed upon this harp of a thousand strings the spirits of trusts made perfect these many days; but like the rude awakening of the sud- den announcements of Mr. Els aunt, to her inattention and wild dreams there has come a rather sudden end and most peculiar disillusionment
 All of the furnaces in the district are blowing and roaring and signing 25 hours out of every 24; employees Qa- borers, the fellows with the distended dinner pails and round, fat paunches), are working overtime and the iron masters and iron-mongers are batten- ing and fattening like Chinese man. darins whose food is crammed down their throats by officials of their Households appointed to that end, somewhat after the manner in which a goose Is fattened On the crest of wave of prosperity which seems to rise higher and higher under the impulse that propels 1t, they are riding to the gold coast without even the encumb- rance of the protection" plank upon which they performed the feat hereto Tore. With a mountain of sheckels in the midst the valley Is desolate.
 The merchants of the city by some sort of dead reckoning have come to the conclusion that the commissaries operated by Birminghams industries absorb the earnings of the man with the full dinner pail, but the writer has not the least doubt that fnyesti- gation will demonstrate that these cor porations purchase at wholesale in this city tho larger portion of the stuffs