Birmingham at night glows to the sky with furnaces. A hundred thousand black proletarians earn their living on coal and steel, stirring up soot to heaven. Though I met there the charming Mrs. J——, whom I have mentioned, and also other educated Negroes, it is not to be supposed that it is a place of culture, white or black. It is a straggling city with an ugly, misshapen, ill-balanced interior or center part like a table spread with small teacups and large jam pots. It will not stand comparison with Atlanta or New Orleans or Richmond. Strictly speaking, it is not a city, but an agglomeration of industrialism. Nevertheless, the factories which surround it are owned by companies of vast resources, and it is claimed that in the steel industry there are some of the most extensive industrial plants in the world. Business is little disturbed by strikes. On the gates of the vast factory estates is written: _We do not want you unless you are able to look after yourself. Careless men are always liable to accident._ Some notices declare “Non-Union Shops,” others “Open Shops,” but it does not seem to matter much. The unions have little power. Wages are high, though not as high as in the North, but the cost of living is very much less, and there is a lower standard of respectability. In some cases the industrials are housed on the factory grounds, and you see Negro dwellings which amount to industrial barracks. Every gate has its porter or civilian sentry, and in order to reach your workingman you may have to show what your business is with him. On the way to his door you are met by the notice that trespassers will be prosecuted. There is no encouragement to loiterers, but you may see the Negro gangs at work, organized squads of workers hard at it, with Negro foremen or white foremen. A myriad-fold Negro industrialism straggles near mines and furnaces, blacker than in Nature. The coaly black Negro collier, the sooted face of steel worker and tar operative are curious comments on whether it is good to be Black or to be White. Coke products flame and smoke at innumerable pipes, while locomotives are panting and steaming forward and back, and a platoon of chimney stacks belches forth dense blackness, which, enfolded in the breeze, wanders over the heavens and one’s eyes.