The iron and coal industries also relied on native labor in the South. In the 1880s Birmingham, Alabama, located in the midst of both coal and iron ore deposits, overtook Chattanooga, Tennessee, as the center of the Southern iron industry. As the more modern and highly financed northern mills moved into steel, Birmingham produced cheap pig iron used chiefly in pipes for new water and gas lines. Relying on poorly paid black workers, Birmingham turned inferior coal and inferior iron ore into an inferior metal.
