for Aaron Christian:

from the August 18, 1912 TUSCALOOSA

 

Another Jemison, for more than ten years Tuscaloosa's mayor, than whom Tuscaloosa never had a citizen more progressive and public spirited, threw all the enthusiasm of his warm-hearted nature into the work of opening it for the upbuilding of his city. The improvement of the Warrior was advocated--river congresses were held- appropriations first for surveys and then for the inauguration of the work were obtained. When in 1887 there came to us that first great wave of new life -that surging tide of hope and confidence that swept over all the South from Virginia to Texas, our people were only too ready to go with the tide. We thought we had come at once to the point it has required twenty-five years to reach- all things seemed possible- dreams were taken for true-speculation ran riot.

We organized not one but two companies to surpass the record of the Elyton Land company, and some of us found money besides to make first payments on high priced lots in Birmingham and Chattanooga. With divided strength we undertook half a dozen great developments, any one of which required our total resources. The inevitable result followed. The L. & N.

which had already come to Brookwood stopped there. The spur built to the site of the Friedman furnace was never used even to assemble the material for its construction. The piers built for the Tuscaloosa Northern to cross the Warrior never supported a bridge--for ten years its roadbed served only to point the way to the vacant river-side fields which the locater of Holt still later bought for an orchard. Our first street car line, extended beyond the University and Asylum to our first and only park, after drawing out some years of unprofitable life in competition with the then more up-to-date Tuscaloosa Belt, was finally abandoned. Lake Lorraine and the magnificent Castle Hill property beyond it were sold to the Hospital, which still expanding, later acquired the lands along the river which had formed the basis for the organization of another of the land companies of the boom period- -the Graystone, now almost forgotten.

The Tuscaloosa Belt did not justify its name and failing to pay even after competition was withdrawn, gradually became the "dummy"- dilapidated and despised. When in the depths of the depression of the panic of 1893 Mr. Woolfolk come to us with his promotion of the Montgomery, Tuscaloosa & Memphis railroad, the Land Company, its owner, was ready to turn it over to him for a quite nominal consideration, and to give to him, with no consideration whatever other than the benefits expected to result from his anticipated success in securing its extension into the Warrior coal field, not only the Tuscaloosa Northern, upon which it had spent a hundred thousand dollars, but a thousand acres of coal lands including the Maxwell mine, best known of all the early workings between Tuscaloosa and Brookwood. But for the Land Company also, Woolfolk's M., 1 T. & M.

proved the "Empty M," which some of its unpaid engineers and contractors derisively named it. It became involved in financial difficulties which prevented its reaching Tuscaloosa in time to secure the $100,000 donation which it is not to be forgotten that the people of Tuscaloosa had the courage to pledge to it even in that time of depression. Transferred to the M. & O. as the necessary condition to its completion, while the Maxwell mine remained the property of Woolfolk, the thousands of dollars which had already been spent upon the extension of the Tuscaloosa Northern from the mouth of the Hurricane towards Brookwood were not enough to induce the completion of the work.

Another grade headed into the coal fields was abandoned. The Warrior branch of the M. & O. halted for several years at Tidewater, reaching but a single mine, and that one requiring for its successful operation the construction of a washer involving an outlay greater than any of its owners have been willing to make, and therefore remaining undeveloped. And even when later as the Warrior Southern it was extended to Kellerman to reach the mine of the Central Iron & Coal company opened to supply the requirements of its furnace at Holt, it brought the opening of no other mine, and separated from the tracks of the L.

& N. by the heighth of the great ridge through which it tunnels its way beyond Searles, did not give to Tuscaloosa, even, by connection, that direct access to the developed mines and ore beds of eastern Tuscaloosa county and of all the mineral district for lack of which it languished. Again disappointed, Tuscaloosa renewed its efforts to induce the building of such a road. Aid was given the promotion of the line from Vicksburg through Canton to Birmingham - overtures were made to the Illinois Central and again to the L. & N.- negotiations were drawn out for nearly two years with both the M.

& 0. and A. G. S. But the time was not ripe- hopes were raised only to be disappointed- the small panic of 1907 and the anti-railroad agitation which culminated in the administration of Governor Comer being probably the determing factors in the adverse conclusion finally reached.

The panic passed, the Comer legislature adjourned, and its work went before the courts. The panic had not hurt us. Our growth through all the years since the coming of the M. & 0. had been steady, if slow, and was proven sound and healthy.

We had come to the realization of the possession of another source of wealth in our timber. Lumber had advanced greatly and saw mills and planing mills gave us in the aggregate considerable payrolls. The single furnace at Holt had helped us much. Year by year the general condition of our upland farmers had improved. Better roads had been built, and better houses, and fields, better plowed and better fertilized, began to appear along them.

The great work of opening the river for all-the-year navigation had entered its final stage. Far to the south the greater work linked with this in our thoughts had been begun--the Panama Canal was under construction and its completion was already appointed for 1915, a period not distant as time is measured in great enterprises. In all the south a new era of railroad construction was beginning in anticipation of the readjustment of the great currents of the.