The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-08-26
Fireworks in Birmingham A mighty Bessemer converter in action.

to build the hotel The big skyscrapers are founded on iron investments, the
 magnificent homes come chiefly from speculations in iron and steel, and the railroad tonnage of the city, which is
 three times as great as that of the cot ton crop of the south, is supplied by
 the same industry
 The town is full of good boosters and
 1t advertises Its speciality in original ways. As rode over the fairgrounds
 today I saw the great iron statue of Vulcan, which Birmingham sent to the
 St. Louis exposition to show the pros perity of It's iron and steel. The statue Is as tall as a four-story house and is
 so heavy that it would take 100 horses to haul 1t if 1t were placed upon wheels.
 It is made of cast iron and 1t cost S26.
 000 It came out of the furnaces here, and was returned to the city after the show. It now rises above the grand stand of the race track. holding in it's
 uplifted hand a great ball of iron, to which Is attached an advertisement of pickles.
 Before I describe my visit to the steel plant at Ensley, on the outskirts of Birmingham, I want to say a word about the steel industry and it's enor- nous importance at this critical time in our history. Not only here but in every steel and iron region of the United States the plants are working at their full capacity Many of them are guarded by soldiers, for they are engaged upon work which Is directly or indirectly on behalf of the govern ment Within the past few years there has been great increase in steel man. ufacture, and our product has been growing rapidly since the war broke out in Europe. We have the greatest Iron and steel resources of the world, and at the time the war began we were smelling about four times as much iron as Great Britain, three or four times as much as France and more than twice as much as the German empire. Last year we produced more than 42,000,000 tons of ingots, which was more than half of the production of the whole world It was enough to make 30,000,000 tons of steel, and it has been turned Into rails, armor plate and structural material. A large part of 1t went into barbed wire, millions of tons into sheets and black plates for timing and millions of tons into tubes of various kinds.
 Just now we need a great deal of steel for shipyards and also for the army and navy. There Is an additional demand for motor trucks and steel cars, and also for barbed wire for en- tanglements along the lines of tho trenches. In one week the government orders included 1000 tons of sheets to be made into camp equipment and powder tanks; and we have to supply railroad material not only for the United States, but also for our allies including the Russians. They are mak- ing steel shells at several plants within a short distance of Birmingham, and the great munitions plants are eating up steel by the thousands of tons. The prospect Is that there will be steady expansion of the iron and steel industry as long as the war lasts, and at it's close the demand for the products will continue on account of the rehabilita- tfon of Europe and the exports de- manded by the cessation of steel ship ments during the war to many parts of the world. Indeed, there is no in dustry In the United States that cuts so great a figure today as that of iron and steel
 And now let me show you something of the iron and steel resources of the south So far the bulk of these prod- ucts has come from the north and northwest. The south is now produc
 ing more than one-eighth of the pig iron and the steel manufacture Is rap
 idly growing. The southern states have, 1t Is estimated, about 75 per cent of the coking coal of the country and the United States geological survey has figured that its iron resources are In the netghborhood of 3,000,000,00o tons
 of which almost one-third Is already available. In this Birmingham district alone there are ore reserves of nearly
 360 OO00 900 tons ready for use, and an
 equal amount can be brought forth for
 the future There is another district
 near here, which is known as the Chat
 tanooga- -Gadsden region, in which the
 available ore reserves are over S6,000,- 900 tons with an ultimate produce more than five times as large. Great beds of iron are scattered throughout the southern Appalachian mountains and there are valuable deposits in Mis- souri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. In three counties in Texas there are 25,O00 acres of ore lands which are said to contain 100,000,000 tons of first class smelling ore. and they are now shipping iron from Port Bolivar on Galveston bay.
 To give you some idea of what the south is doing in iron and steel I have gone through some of the great plants l here at Birmingham. Take, for in : 1 stance, that of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad company. which is situ- l ated at Ensley, not far from the city | The property belongs to the United | States Steel company, which has ex- pended about s32,000,000 for improve ments since it was taken over. and which has now authorized the rapid | expenditure of $11 100000 more to meet l the demands of the war. This plant is
 now working at it's full capacity upon l orders for the United States govern