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The Role of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in the Early Development of Alabama Coal and Iron

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Jean E. Keith
Jean E. Keith
Affiliation:
Baltimore, Maryland
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Extract

It would be impossible within the brief compass of this paper to give even a fraction of the chronological developments in the complicated story of the close inter-relationships of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad with the mining and manufacturing interests of northern Alabama in the formative years of the 1870's and 1880's. Instead, this paper is intended to show in somewhat broader outline how that railroad entered the Birmingham region after the Civil War and something of the scope of information relative to that region's development that can be obtained from the business records of this railroad. It is also the intention of this paper to give some insight into the importance of the role of the railroad outside of its usual part as a carrier only. In the encouragement of traffic peculiar to its own region it was expedient for a railroad to favor some industries over others, some areas over others, some businessmen over others. It was important for the flow of traffic that certain communities be encouraged at the expense of others. Although the physical presence of the railroad itself may account for some alteration in the established patterns of regional economy, the conscious, active, and deliberate attempts of the railroad management to influence the direction of regional growth may well be considered as determining factors.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1952 , pp. 165 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1952

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References

1 Armes, Ethel M., The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham, 1910), p. 278.Google Scholar

2 Proceedings Before the Alabama Railroad Commission at Montgomery, Ala., on April 3–6 and May 3–6, 15, 1905, in the Matter of Fertilizer Rates and on the General Revision of Freight Rates in Alabama (Montgomery, 1905), p. 11.

3 Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company (Louisville, 1866), pp. 20, 50.

4 Armes, op. cit., pp. 98, 186, 187.

5 Ibid., pp. 243–249. For other accounts, see Herr, Kincaid A., The Louisville & Nashville Railroad, 1850–1942 (Louisville, 1943), pp. 29, 30Google Scholar, and Leighton, George R., Five Cities (New York, 1939), p. 110Google Scholar; L&N Annual Report, 1873–74, p. 7.

6 Ibid., p. 11.

7 Armes, op. cit., pp. 241, 242, 253.

8 L&N Annual Report, 1874–75, p. 8. A first discussion by the general manager of the road of the value of direct investment in iron furnaces.

9 Fertilizer Rates, 1906, p. 183.

10 Minutes of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Board of Directors' Meetings (Office of the Secretary to the President, Louisville and Nashville Railroad Office Building, Louisville, Kentucky), III, 5, Oct. 4, 1877; ibid., III, 8, Jan. 9, 1878.

11 Fertilizer Rates, 1906, pp. 56, 183; L&N Minutes, III, 8, Jan. 9, 1878.

12 Ibid., III, 99, Mar. 3, 1880; ibid., III, 278, 279, Jan. 25, 1881; ibid., IV, 85, Nov. 15, 1884.

13 Armes, op. cit., p. 288; L&N Minutes, IV, 85, Nov. 15, 1884; Business letterhead of the company in Land Office File No. 2323 (Real Estate Office, L&N Office Building, Louisville, Kentucky).

14 L&N Minutes, III, 483, June 6, 1883.

15 Above generalizations based upon intensive research into the land office records at Louisville. For at least one direct summation of this general policy there is a letter by Milton H. Smith, president of the L&N, to the effect that this had been his policy for more than twenty years. M. H. Smith to M. M. Bosworth (President of the Pittsburgh and Southern Coal and Iron Company), Sept. 11, 1903, Land Office File No. 2463.

16 This policy was instituted from the very beginning of the land sales. “No. 2 Report of Land Commission,” May 23, 1873, Land Office File No. 2003.

17 L&N Land Sales, I, 1884, passim. (Record of each sale in brief form. Real Estate Office); L&N Minutes, IV, 26, Sept. 29, 1884; ibid., IV, 85, Nov. 15, 1884; ibid., IV, Apr. 28, 1886, Minutes of the Louisville Finance Committee of Apr. 10, 1886.

18 George D. Fitzhugh to M. H. Smith, Apr. 14, 1884, Land Office File No. 2618.

19 Armes, op. cit., p. 334.

20 L&N Minutes, III, 504, 505, Jan. 19, 1884.

21 Ibid., passim. For one typical example, see the contract with the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, L&N minutes, IV, 417–420, Feb. 9, 1887; Land Office File No. 2990.

22 L&N Annual Report, 1888. See Appendix; L&N maps of 1886 and 1896, Land Office Files No. 2148, 2462; W. Mapother to XXth Century Heating and Ventilating Company, Akron, Ohio, May 8, 1906, Land Office File No. 2721.