The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-07-30
For the Good of
 the Community

IN 1876, the year Alabama was wrested from \ the carpet-baggers and the negroes, the total valuation of assessed property in Alabama was $135, ,535 792 Jefferson county's assessment was included in this
 In 1918 the assessed valuation of property in Jefferson county was $165 513 O71 or S29, ,978,352 greater than the total assessed value of all prop erty in the entire state Az years ago.
 In 1876 there was just as much coal and iron ore in Jefferson county as there is today. They worth just as much AZ years ago as they would be today had not brains and capital been. employed to get them out of the ground. Should brains and capital be withdrawn from Jefferson county, these minerals would be worth no more than they were 42 years ago.
 It is brains and capital that make wealth, not natural resources So long as the minerals remain in the ground untouched they are worth no more to the state than equal quantity of the reddest and poorest clay in the most poverty stricken county in Alabama.
 Had it not been for the application of brains and capital and muscle to the development of its minerals, Jefferson county would today be the
  with struggling population of 15, 900 or 10000.
 Take Lamar, Marion or Winston in the north west, or Monroe Washington or Choctaw in the southwest. They are not much more populous or wealthy in this good year 1918 than they were in 1876 They did not have the minerals, or if they had, they have not been developed In Jefferson they have been and are being developed.
 D., and the entire state of Alabama have been en- riched to the extent that Jefferson now pays on a greater property valuation than did the entire state AZ years ago, or even 35 years ago.
 Stop production in Jefferson county today and the immense wealth stored in her hills and valleys will be as valueless as they were before the first coal or iron ore mine opened and when two railroads divided the transportation of the county between them and then carried but little tonnage originating in the county.
 Not only will suspension of the coal and ore mining business kill the values of the coal and the ores, but it will decrease the value of all other property enormously. The magnificent office buildings, the great railway terminals and the hundreds of business houses and thousands of dwellings will fall in value to par with those in the smaller communities. The fat revenues de- rived by the state from Jefferson county will shrink to the levels of other counties in which there are no minerals.
 Jefferson county now pays over 25 per cent of the total revenues collected in Alabama. Jeffer- son county in 1918 paid to the state $252, 2,874.49 taxes on real estate; the entire state paid only $1,111 ,191.65. Jefferson's share was almost 25 per cent
 It is not the untouched coal and iron ore in the ground that makes this great value and produces these revenues. The value attaches to them only as they are made available for the use of man. They were dug from the ground only after the in vestment of millions of dollars of capital and the application of labor and machinery.
 To mine 1000 tons of coal day in Jefferson county requires an investment of something like $1,OOO,000. Assuming that coal mine of this capacity is operated 300 days in year, which is high average, the 30000O tons at 26 cents ton net profit fixed as reasonable by the government during the war, and which is considerably more than is now being earned by the operating com nanias in the RirminU am district thn not pr0ft