The Ghosts of an Empire: The History of the Alabama Fuel and Iron Company in St. Clair County

A stark account reveals how a single employer shaped lives, towns, and labor’s fate.Imagine working for a company that owns your house, your grocery store, your church, and even your children’s schools. That was the reality of hundreds of thousands of Americans during the early twentieth century. In a world of robber barons, Big Mules, and privately owned towns, choices were limited.The biggest Mules of them all, the DeBardeleben family, held Alabama industry with iron fists. Deep in the coal mines of Acmar and Margaret in St. Clair County, Charles DeBardeleben was king. Fiercely anti-labor, DeBardeleben would line his towns with barbed wire, concrete guardhouses, searchlights, dynamite traps, and even machine gun nests. Within the fortresses, the company formed idyllic “workers’ paradises” where every facet of life was provided and controlled by management. As the wealth of black diamonds began to dry up, company towns quickly faded into obscurity and coal barons fell from power. Miners found themselves left in the cold.The kingdom of Charles DeBardeleben was swallowed by pine trees and kudzu, lying dormant for seventy-five years until the history of this great empire was explored by St. Clair County’s native son. Read more