The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-06-18
For Good of
 the Community


 Car company at Fairfield. 1t requires no technical knowledge to inhale the inspira- tion which it inspires.
 In the same yards this company is mak- ing ocean freighters that may be said to have been dug out of the ground beneath and the hills nodding their heads across the narrow valley. In the same curtilage the districts ores are finding final eXpres- sion in that which carries our products by land and that which conveys them over the world in leviathans of the ocean.
 The new car plant cost several millions That is the least part of it. Most of 1t was built at home of home material. The buildings are made of steel smelted at Ensley and fabricated at Fairfield.
 The structures have high roofs and oceans of air rushing between the large openings. On warm day it is more com fortable in these mills than on the streets of Birmingham.
 In front and at sides of the buildings, wheresoever there is plot of unused ground, flowers are blooming and hedge plants freshen the landscape.
 In the long steel structures there IS ice water for black and white. There are comfort stations immediately at hand. ms dVO1QS WdSU0 OI CllllC dllC SllOuI Co sweetness and sanitation.
 Sizes of these buildings are this: Ma chine shop, 19O by 240 feet; pattern shop, 75 by 400; paint shop 18O by 240; wood car shop, 50 by 200; foundry, 180 by 4O0 car erecting shop, 90 by 1,O8O; truck shop, 90 by 300; steel casting shop alone is un- completed.
 In the forge shop one saw at the same L1 >f o iYonn into a shaft part for ship and smaller ingot being hammered into a car axle. At a small machine a man was thrusting red hot ends of steel bars into machinery, which chopped off small pieces made bolts of them, put threads in them and let them fall into hopper. At another red hot bars were let into machinery, which nipped off few inches at time and they came forth rivets At another small parts of steel rods were coined into bolts.
 In the machine shop they had laid out for final touches jointed piece of steel 176 feet long, consisting of eight parts riveted and welded together. This shaft ing extends from engine in ship to rudder and serves to make the rudder turn and propel the ship. It was dream of burn ished steel with fine brass bands about it. That came out of the maW of Red noun tain.
 In the way of material one sees nothing from afar except some pressed steel wheels from Carnegie's works. We will make them next. The cast iron car wheels are made in Birmingham. The material came out of mines and colleries to Ensley and thence wended it's way to the ChickasaW works, changing it's crude into more complete form as it went.
 These works use several kinds of power They take the hydroelectric fluid of the Alabama Power and they use steam. There are great hydraulic presses and compressed air also lends it's services. In one of the shops they use high pres sure gas, which enables rivet to enter one side cold and issues forth on the other side in the twinkling of an eye red hot and ready for it's place in holding the steel parts in place.
 Cranes everywhere, but out of the way One walks through these shops on bed of crushed lime rock, which is soft to the feet and will prevent either hardness in dry weather or lobollies when it is wet.
 Superintendent R. R. Baxter is a typi- cal young American, full of fire, pride