the South

Iron.

The national importance of this industry in the South dates from the founding of Birmingham, Ala., in 1870. Birming ham has coal, iron ore and fluxes almost within a stone's throw of each other. The main coal fields are the Warrior, to the west of Birmingham valley, producing about 85% of the coal output of the State; the Cahaba on the east, producing 12%, and more to the east the Coosa field, producing about 4%. Between the Warrior and Cahaba coal fields, on the ridges just above the geologic horizon, lie the hematite or red ore, and limonite or brown ore ; for fluxing, the bed of the valley contains great areas of lime stone and dolomite. The red ore is the main reliance of the dis trict, being mined chiefly from the Red mountain outcrop between Birmingham and Bessemer. Grey hematite Talladega county may be important in the future. The red hematite is of two vari eties, popularly termed soft and hard. The soft ore is that reaching down from a few feet to 400 ft. below the outcrop, in which the action of water has leached out the lime carbonate, thus increasing proportionately the content of iron oxide and other constituents. Limited in extent, easily mined and rich in iron, the soft ores were worked out first, and are no longer important. The hard ore of the Birmingham district ranges from 32 to 45% metallic iron, with varying percentages of lime, silica, alumina, magnesia, sul phur and phosphorus. The phosphorus content runs from 0.25 to 1.5%, thus rendering the ore unfit for the Bessemer process of steel-making. The Birmingham district must now reach its hard ore by vertical shafts 1,000 to 2,000 ft. deep, or by slopes three or four times the length, but there is the compensation that these deeper-lying ores may contain enough lime to be self-fluxing.

Alabama has coal reserves of about 66 thousand million short tons. Half a million tons were mined in 1880, the industry really getting under way only after the opening of the Birmingham iron district. Iron making at Birmingham, despite the presence of coal, began with charcoal as fuel. The Tennessee industry was wholly of this nature. Coke was first made in Alabama in 1854, and the next year, near Ragland, was applied to foundry use, but the iron and coke industries in this State did not receive their impetus until in 1876 coke of the native coal, made in bee-hive ovens at the Oxmoor furnace in Jefferson county, was used to produce pig iron. From 1,262 tons of pig iron made with coke in this year, the pro duction has grown to upwards of three million tons in 1925. The first steel was poured Alabama in 1888, but up to 1897 the total tonnage of basic open-hearth steel made at North Birming ham did not exceed 3,500 tons. Prior to 1890 Birmingham iron masters exported much of their product. This did well enough until the great Mesabi range in the Lake Superior region was opened. Bessemer pig iron at Pittsburgh fell off sharply in price, due to the cheap new ore—from $23.60 in Jan. 1890, to $13.60 in Jan. 1893. In the years of lowest prices, 1897-98, Mesabi non Bessemer ore, after paying all costs of mining and shipping, was selling at Lake Erie ports at $1.70 to $1.80 per ton, and Bessemer ore at $2.10 to $2.15. This revolution in the industry was almost

disastrous to the Birmingham district, its merchant mills having to pay heavy freights to the markets. The demand was for Bessemer steel, and iron too high in phosphorus content for this process, such as that smelted from ores of the Birmingham district, was in the discard. The panic in 1893 and the depression that followed added a critical strain; capital was lacking in the South, and one reor ganization followed another in the Birmingham companies.

The only salvation was to convert Southern pig iron into steel. Deliverance came from two quarters at once. In 1897 the pig iron industry the country over revived a little, in 1898 the output was up 22%, and another 16% increase by 1899 found resources taxed, and the price rose abruptly. Birmingham foundry iron de livered at Cincinnati sold for $9.33 a ton in 1897, was ui5 13 cents the next year, and by 1899 averaged $16.58, a gain of $7. By 1902 the price was $20. Just when this grateful rise in the price of pig was occurring, open hearth steel began to be made in the Birmingham district on a large scale. In Nov. 1899, a specially organized subsidiary of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company poured its first steel from ten 50-ton tilting furnaces which had an annual ingot capacity of 300,00o tons. It was estab lished now that Birmingham, turning its basic pig iron into steel by the open-hearth method, could successfully compete in the steel markets; its unusual advantages, once the domination of Bessemer steel was removed, came rapidly into play. The years that fol lowed were marked by the rise of new companies and the consol idation of old ones. The culmination came in 1907. A new and progressive syndicate controlling the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company had embarked on the most extensive scheme of steel and iron development the South had known, embracing the construction of a large duplex process steel plant at Ensley, 7 m. W. of Birmingham. By the late fall of 2907, the company had outstanding loans of some $33,000,000, and as a result of the panic of that year the Tennessee Company was bought by the United States Steel Corporation, Nov. 5, for Twenty-five years ago 7o% of the raw foundry iron made in the South was shipped to the North and West, and only 3o% was retained for Southern markets. In 1928 less than 2o% was shipped out, more than 8o% being worked up at home (86% of that of the Birmingham district). The first iron-using plants erected in the South on a large scale were those making water and gas pipe. Soil-pipe plants were soon established. Of the pig iron produced in the South, 5o% is consumed by more than 600 grey iron foundries in the section, by far the largest number of which make stoves, radiators, agricultural implements, car wheels and machinery. The smaller number of these foundries, however, the pipe shops, use almost twice as much pig iron as the rest. Thus the iron industry of the South, like the textile manufacture, is no longer confined to crude production, but embraces finer fabri cation. Birmingham, in the great variety of its products, is an excellent example.