From the day
Perspective: The Future Historian · Sight
I squint through the soot-stained air at the newsstand, where the bold ink confirms Alabama’s coal output for 1900 has reached a staggering eight million tons. It is a bally triumph of industry that fuels the black plumes choking this winter sky, casting a grim shadow over the stiff, high-collared silhouettes of the passerby. Beneath the flicker of a sputtering gaslight, a child clutches a new Meccano set, his eyes reflecting the cold steel of a burgeoning mechanical age. This feverish extraction of the earth's marrow is the very spark that will ignite the accelerated century ahead.