Birmingham without seeing an iron and steel plant would be like
visiting Rome without seeing the Forum. Consequently my companion and I
made application for permission to go through the Tennessee Coal, Iron,
& Railroad Company's plant, at Ensley, on the outskirts of the city.
When the permission was refused us we attacked from another angle--using
influence--and were refused again. Next we called upon a high official
of the company, and (as we had, of course, done in making our previous
requests for admission to the plant) explained our errand.

Though this gentleman received us with the utmost courtesy, he declared
that the company desired no publicity, and plainly indicated that he was
not disposed to let us into the plant.

"I'll tell you what the trouble is," said my companion to me. "This
company is a part of the United States Steel Corporation, and in the old
muckraking days it was thoroughly raked. They think that we have come
down here full of passionate feeling over the poor, downtrodden
workingman and the great, greedy octopus."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, we are a writer and an artist. Lots of writers and artists have
made good livings by teaching magazine readers that it is dishonest for
a corporation, or a corporation official, to prosper; that the way to
integrity is through insolvency; that the word 'company' is a term of
reproach, while 'corporation' is a foul epithet, and 'trust' blasphemy."

"What shall we do?"

"We must make it clear to these people," he said, "that we have no
mission. We must satisfy them that we are not reformers--that we didn't
come to dig out a red-hot story, but to see red-hot rails rolled out."

Pursuing this course, we were successful. All that any official of the
company required of us was that we be open-minded. The position of the
company, when we came to understand it, was simply that it did not wish
to facilitate the work of men who came down with pencils, paper, and
preconceived "views," deliberately to play the great American game of
"swat the corporation."

* * * * *

Surely there is not in the world an industry which, for sheer pictorial
magnificence, rivals the modern manufacturing of steel. In the first
place, the scale of everything is inexpressibly stupendous. To speak of
a row of six blast furnaces, with mouths a hundred feet above the
ground, and chimneys rising perhaps another hundred feet above these
mouths, i