The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-04-06
For Good of
 the Community
THE Gulf States Steel company is using


 the exhaust steam in it's Gadsden millsto operate electrical machinery that will turn the wheels in that plant That is another economy of operations installed by an Alabama industrial concern in or der that this state may preserve it's pres tige and it's markets in the competitive fields.
 Last week this company began opera tion of it's hoisting machinery at the Shan non self-fluXing ore mine. From bins 2,772 feet from the surface the ore will be raised 2,000 to 5000 tons per diem. That will be enough for the Gulf States Steel and several other furnaces.
 It is like the sleep of giant. While he is taking his rest he gathers strength for the next effort of his sinews. When he awakens it is with renewed vigor and spirit for the work ahead, with greater capacity to create, to do and go ahead.
 The Gulf States Steel is operating on part turn now and sluggish markets at home and abroad take little of it's product, but the demand will first stir, then rise and then gather a new momentum. The new momentum will be the greater be- cause the-World has done without so long. Then the Shannon ore mine,s which was seven years in developing, the turbo-gen- orators at the Gadsden works and the other improvements and enlargements there will enable the company to do that much larger business. with the thirty na- tions whom it hasheretofore supplied with Alabama steel products.
 But the ore mine and the turbo-genera- tors have cost money. The company is C provements in 1920. To operate success fully this money must be recouped. That should be borne in mind when we con- gratulate ourselves on the dollar indirect that is to come to us all from the dollar di- rect expended by the Gulf States Steel
 And out at Fairfield they are applying the finishing touches to the pressed steel car plant It is an adjunct and auxiliary of the ship material plant, the whole be- ing so deftly arranged that either ship parts or car parts, can be turned out by the same machinery.
 This has also cost a lot of money. While it's operation is filling pay envelopes, which, in turn, will flow into the coffers of merchants and landlords, the Chickasaw company must be getting back the money placed in the car works.
 It so easy to look around at the invest ments of large concerns and contemplate them only in the light of what the tax man can get out of them; what each of us can get out of them. It must be also realized that large concerns are no further re- moved from the profit and loss account than the individual. The government is too often conceived as thing apart from the ordinary matter of income and outgo. It is the same as any other business The government ex- ists by and through the taxes levied on the people, hence it must have these taxes or the common support will not be enabled. When the government builds post offices the people must pay for them.
 A ship month turned out at Mobile to carry our Alabama goods over the world. Each of these ships costs about $1, ,0OO,- 900. Before any one of these ships begins to become an asset instead of liability to the builders it must earn S1,000,000 in freight charges levied on the goods trans ported in its bottoms.
 Alabama concerns invested $15,000- 1000 in the by-product industry alone in 1920. That $15, 900, 900 must come back before they are paid for and the stock