The Sloss Story

The Beginning

James Withers Sloss, a Scotch-Irish Alabaman, born in 1820, became wealthy by the time he was in his 30’s, making his money as a merchant and plantation owner. Sloss became involved with the railroads in the 1850s and ended up as the president of the Nashville and Decatur line. Following the Civil War, he became a big proponent of Alabama’s industrial development. Sloss’s eventual 1871 deal with L&N Railroad, linking Decatur, Illinois and Birmingham, and ultimately reaching the Gulf of Mexico, was the precursor to L&N’s $30 million investment in furnaces, mines, wharves, steamship lines and other Alabama operations. The annual value of tonnage of iron, coal, and other mineral products, would outweigh the nation’s entire cotton crop by 1888.

The economic impact of the L&N investment transformed Birmingham from a ragged collection of squalid shanties and tents into a vibrant and energized community. Sloss and his Birmingham partners, Henry DeBardeleben and James Aldrich were ready to exploit the rich mineral resources surrounding Birmingham. They soon acquired 30,000 acres and formed the Pratt Coal and Coke Company. In the early 1880’s, with the financing of DeBardeleben, Sloss founded the Sloss Furnace Company. The blast furnaces at Sloss, along with a second blast furnace at City Furnaces, provided pig iron for Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, and Cleveland. The difference in Southern pig iron costs to Northern plants ($10-$11 a ton as compared to $18.30 a ton) ignited a Birmingham boom that earned the nickname The Magic City.