There are those who think of Boston
only as headquarters of the shoe trade, others who think of it only in
the terms of culture, and still others who regard it solely as an abode
of negrophiles.
In the case of the chief city of Alabama, however, my companion and I
noticed, as we journeyed through the South, that reports were
singularly in accord. Birmingham is too young to have any Civil War
history. Her history is the history of the steel industry in the South,
and one hears always of that: of the affluence of the city when the
industry is thriving, and hard times when it is not. One is invariably
told that Birmingham is not a southern city, but a northern city in the
South, and the chief glories of the place, aside from steel, are (if one
is to believe rumors current upon railroad trains and elsewhere), a
twenty-seven story building, Senator Oscar Underwood, the distinguished
Democratic leader, and the Tutwiler Hotel. Even in Atlanta it is
conceded that the Tutwiler is a good hotel, and when Atlanta admits that
anything in Birmingham is good it may be considered as established that
the thing is very, very good--for Birmingham and Atlanta view each other
with the same degree of cordiality as is exchanged between St. Louis and
Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
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