Birmingham AL: The purest example of southern industrial city-building in this period was the “satellite” cities, Birmingham the most successful. Financed by iron-steel firms, satellite cities formed around iron/steel furnaces and grew dramatically. Railroad and northern investment combined with southern surplus agricultural labor were key ingredients. Birmingham, arguably the leader of the pack, deserves a closer look. Birmingham had incorporated in 1871. Surrounded by rich deposits of coal, limestone and iron ore, connected by rail, financing by northern investors, it quickly became a southern boomtown and an “instant city”. Its factories, furnaces, jobs and population, initially located in a ring of satellite towns outside Birmingham’s city limits. Birmingham had the last laugh, however: it annexed the towns. In 1900, its population 40,000, the “Greater Birmingham Plan” sailed through the state legislature and the city annexed a number of surrounding suburbs/unincorporated areas (and their steel facilities). In 1920, its population reached 179,000, almost the same size as Atlanta, the South’s third most populous city.
Both a Business Men’s League and a Merchants and Manufacturers Association were formed in 1909—taking care the one percenters and general business community had a place to go. In the same year the Birmingham Commercial Club moved to a new “ten-story skyscraper” and changed its name to the Chamber of Commerce. Brownell contends the general business community was not active participants in economic development policy during these years—leaving that responsibility to the one percenters. In Birmingham “the most controversial and hotly debated issues of the period were not economic, but moral or religious in character (the issues of prohibition, Sabbath observance, and public dancing were especially important in Birmingham” (Brownell, 1975, pp. 49-55).
Birmingham, very much the blue collar city, sprawled and built its copy-cat skyscrapers. By 1924 its working class, employed in the city’s 788 manufacturing firms, exceeded 100,000. About 15,000 worked the steel mills, and over 5,000 in iron ore mines. Many continued to live on the outskirts or in company towns—unionization was minimal and labor strife (after crushing the 1908 miner’s strike) restrained. Blacks (40% of the city’s population in 1920) were increasingly driven from industrial jobs. Pittsburgh Plus pricing, in effect since the 1880’s, constrained growth; Birmingham was among the first to cut production during the Great Depression.
Ron W. Coan 