Birmingham, a hive of southern industry placed almost as if by magic in the leisurely cotton lands of the South, had no existence in 1870, when the Pittsburgh prosperity began.

In the Civil War, the present site of a city with a population of 140,000 was merely a blacksmith shop in the fork of the roads.

Yet this district has advantages for the manufacture of steel that have no parallel elsewhere.
The steel companies which are located here do not have to bring their materials laboriously from a distance but possess, immediately at hand, apparently endless store of the three things needful for making steel--iron ore, coal, and limestone.

All these territories have their personal romances and their heroes, many of them quite as picturesque as those of the Pittsburgh group.
It is doubtful indeed if American industry presents any figure quite as astonishing and variegated as that of John W.Gates, the man who educated farmers all over the world to the use of wire fencing.

Half charlatan, half enthusiast, speculator, gambler, a man who created great enterprises and who also destroyed them, at times an upbuilding force and at other times a sinister influence, Gates completely typified a period in American history that, along with much that was heroic and splendid, had much also that was grotesque and sordid.