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Show Alabama's Industries ill rVfT sS ! r , v :Ndj H'MtHfU n fin t If III H I i l tl i j , i n. !-.;! iH Mill f? "nMMlf ' l"'t 1 I ? v I fit tP it i : r m u u B 1 llr mm 1 cfr ' f h Paper From Alabama Pine at a Mobile Mill. Prepared by National Geographic Society. Washington, D. C. WNU Service. SLIGHTLY more than a half century cen-tury ago, Alabama was almost wholly an agricultural region and Birmingham a small railroad Junction town. Today the state, though still numbered among the southern cotton-growing regions, has more than 2.S00 Industrial establishments and Birmingham, now a city of more than a quarter of a million inhabitants, is called the "Pittsburgh of the South." While Washington, first President, struggled with a new nation's many problems, and Paris still rocked from revolutionary disorders, white pioneers from Virginia, the Curolinas and Georgia Geor-gia began to penetrate Alabama. Some were settling nlong the Tombig-bee Tombig-bee on land claimed by both Spain and the Cnited States. Some, as traders, founded crude posts that grew to towns; others, married to Indian women, took no part in the life of new white colonies. Occasionally there was the renegrade, or fugitive from Atlantic Atlan-tic coast Justice, as "Savannah Jack." boasting he had slain so many men that he could "swim in their blood, were it collected in one pool." But the historic rush of home-seekers, which was to put tens of thousands thou-sands of whites on Alabama lands within a generation, did not begin till after 1S00. When treaties with the Choctaws In 1S02 and 180S threw open rich lands for settlement, new routes of travel were opened ; and the human tide moved into Alabama, along with other great migratory tides to the west. By 1S0S thousands had staked out homes In the picturesque Tennessee Tennes-see valley, which crosses northern Alabama. Ala-bama. The old Immigrant or "Federal Road" from Georgia west was to Alabama what the ancient Via Appla was to the country south of Rome. The trek and trudge over it was so continuous, says one early writer, that for days. Journeying Jour-neying against the Immigrant tide, he was always In sight of wagon trains, pack horses, and long files of tramping tramp-ing slaves. Whitney's new cotton gin helped start these men west and extended ex-tended slavery. England, after her Industrial In-dustrial revolution, was bidding for cotton, and rich, cheap cotton land was the lure. From Virginia, the Caro-linas Caro-linas and Georgia came planters, merchants mer-chants and artisans, the well-to-do often in elegant carriages, barouches or sulkies. Other thousands walked all the way. How They Went to Alabama. It was like the later gold rush to California. In one of the 1S19 issues of the Augusta Chronicle is recorded the fact that there passed through a "man, his wife, a son and hiS wife, with a cart but no horse. The man had a belt over his shoulders and drew the cart. The old woman was walking, walk-ing, carrying a rifle and driving a cow." Others had their goods "packed In a hogs-head, with trunnions put in the ends and shafts attached." It Is recorded that some families rolled their goods in this manner all the way from Carolina to Alabama. You can talk still to older Alabama residents who remember what their grandfathers grandfa-thers told of this historic migration, when they came with it as young men. "My grandfather brought his bees in hives." says a Birmingham lawyer. "If they swarmed, the whole wagon train turned out, drumming on pots and pans to make the bees 'settle' again. He brought garden seeds and young fruit trees. Even a strand of pussy willow, worn as a hatband, he planted on the new land he chose and It's still growing there. "When my folks first settled they had to ride a mule, by compass, 100 miles to the nearest blacksmith to get plow points sharpened. If their fire died out. they used to 'borrow fire.' There being no matches, a boy on a horse was sent to the nearest neighbor, neigh-bor, to come galloping home with a burning piece of 'pine fat.' " Unique In Alabama annals was the foundling of Demopolis, on the Tom-blgbee. Tom-blgbee. Certain distinguished Frenchmen, French-men, banished from Paris after Napoleon's Na-poleon's sun had set. migrated here to start vineyards and olive groves. They tvere, says history, "men who had Known Napoleon on Intimate terms; svhn had had conspicuous part In the society. Intrigue, and campaigns of the French revolution and voted to execute exe-cute a French king and ladies who had figured in the voluptuous drawing rooms of St. Cloud, and glittered in the smiles and favors of Josephine and Marie Antoinette." Fortunes Made in Cotton. Thus, through ante-belinu decades, fou saw Alabama grow up. Politics bubbled. Towns, plantations, slaves all multiplied. Paths and mere trucks on the ground turned to roads. Palatial Pala-tial steamers, with romantic names, and string bands, deck-hand quartettes, quar-tettes, and steam calliopes to entertain the passengers, came to ply the rivers. Cotton was king; sometimes it was 30 cents a pound and more. Real estate companies abounded and the South saw its first land boom. Slumps followed, fol-lowed, booms; but men talked always of slaves and cotton and more cotton. Fortunes grew. From New York to New Orleans before 1S-10 the "Pony Express" was running. With 200 hoy riders and 500 horses, relayed every 12 miles, the "fast mall" averaged 14 miles an hour! Mounted on blooded saddle horses, attended by1 slave grooms and body servants, kid-gloved sons of the bluestockings blue-stockings sought culture at Tuscaloosa, where the new university was set. A "railroad" one of the first built in America was the boast of Tus-cumbia. Tus-cumbia. Its tiny coaches ran on wooden wood-en rails, drawn by horses until its toy locomotive came in 1S34. But much cotton still went by keel-boat over the winding Tennessee river up to the Ohio, and down to the Mississippi, to New Orleans. After 1S50, shops and mills Increased. In-creased. More men began to spin, weave, saw lumber, smelt iron ore, make shoes, plows, and furniture everything from ax handles to steamboats. steam-boats. But only in a small way. Alabama Ala-bama was still a big buyer of northern-made tilings and essentially agrarian. agra-rian. These were "old plantation days" that golden age of Alabama whose mere mention still arouses emotions In the born Southerner. Then the guns of Sumter; the Confederacy. Con-federacy. Years of war and ruin for Alabama, In which she learned one good lesson : that she could support herself, live within her own boundaries. Then that quiet Palm Sunday at Appomattox, Ap-pomattox, when the great opponents, Grant and Lee, without parade, band music, swords, or cannon salutes, quietly made terms of surrender. For more than a century cotton was the symbol of life. The poor renter, with one mule and one plow, like the rich planter with domain Intact from slave times, depended on this one crop. Then Varied Industry. But world conditions change. Some old customers overseas no longer must buy most of their cotton from us. More and more it Is raised elsewhere as In Africa, Asia. So now it grows harder for Alabama to sell cotton abroad at a fair price. But it has thought, talked, planted, picked, ginned, pressed, and sold cotton so long, and so fixed Is this cotton-only habit that the state Imports much butter, milk, potatoes, even hay. Happily, escape Is In sight. What with science, research, farm schools and good example of the more alert farmers who prove Alabama can grow much besides cotton you see dawning dawn-ing in the state a new. diversified agriculture. But that Is not all. -From the North men have come with money and machines, ma-chines, starting mills, shops, smelters many Industries new to Alahama. Its factories, scattered over the state, with workers to be fed. open a widening market for Alabama fruit vegetable, poultry and dairy farms. Swiftly, as the lives of states are measured, you see this clamorous, alien culture of smoke and steel being Imposed Im-posed on a proud, leisurely society, accustomed for generations to its vast cottonfields, plantation homes, and calm, well-ordered rural existence. With her water power, coal, ores, lnmber, raw cotton, surplus labor, and fine climate, Alabama is forced to bid her hand. And industrialism Is trumps. Cotton she will grow, Indefinitely. But more of other things, too reaching finally a happier economic balance between be-tween town and country life. Colleges dot the state; free county busses haul children many miles to consolidated con-solidated schools, and far more teachers teach-ers are graduated each year than the state can use. You need no rubber yardstick to measure education's march. Next to schools, electris power is the prime factor in Alabama's growth. It has worked miracles here. Men dammed the streams and blazed wide avenues through the woods for rows of steel towers that carry wires to all parts of the state. Wherever raw materials ma-terials exist, there power Is sent. Copper wire, hosiery, silk, condensed milk, steel freight cars, braid and ribbons, rib-bons, electro-chemical products, all these and more, are now manufactured in the state. t I I i |