Milton Fies

Fies's father, Jacob Fies, was a German Jew who founded the Livery and Feed Stable Company in Birmingham, Alabama.^[5] Jacob Fies, who was born in Trainbach, Alsace, Germany in 1827, came to Birmingham in 1882. By 1900 the J. Fies and Sons livery stable was by far the largest in the south.^[6] Milton Fies was one of six children born to Jacob Fies and Fanne Kahn.^[7]

Fies graduated as a Bachelor of Science from Columbia University, School of Mines in 1904. In 1907, he was married to Rose Mayer. From 1904 to 1910, he worked for Republic Iron and Steel Company as a resident engineer and then the superintendent of mines. From 1910 to 1912, he was the general superintendent of mines for the Birmingham Coal and Iron Company, and then subsequently took work with the DeBardeleben coal company.^[2]

In 1912-13 the town of Sipsey, Alabama was laid out by Fies and his wife Rose. Fies was then superintendent of the local mine owned by Henry T. DeBardeleben and vice-president of the company,^[8] as accommodation for the miners.^[9][10] Accommodation was segregated in keeping with the Jim Crow practices of the time, though the workers were better paid than in other mines.^[11] Funds to construct the new school house at Sipsey ran out before it was finished, but DeBardeleben released more funds to finish it under Fies's urging, however, once it was finished only white residents were allowed to use it, with black residents having to make do with the dilapidated old school house for a number of more years before a new school was finally constructed for them.^[12]

Fies has been praised for supporting the education of African-Americans.^[13] During WW1 he supported paying black workers more in order to keep them from migrating to northern states to work in war-related industries as well as other northern industries, however the salaries offered in Birmingham remained less than those paid in the northern states.^[14]

Fies also offered poor compensation to injured black workers, offering only $100 to a black worker who was badly burned whilst working at the Sipsey mine.^[15] Later in life he declined to endorse the Tuskegee United Negro College Fund, stating that the fund already had enough support from "men of Hebraic religious affiliation" such as himself and that he did not wish to incite anti-Semitic sentiment.^[13] Fies also offered to collect money owed to plantation managers by his black workers, essentially sharing them with the plantations.^[16] When in 1914, a night boss killed a black miner for being "impertinent" and failing to show up to work, Fies responded by calling in a local deputy to arrest the other black miners who protested the killing, and then fired five of them. He similarly fired a black employee for "insulting" the wife of a company agent, and spoke of "...hanging the negro upon a limb and shooting him full of holes".^[17]

Fies preferred a top-down approach to labour management through what he called "company welfare", where the company would offer amenities such as schools and hospitals to their workers. He stated that extending this to black workers was their "reward" for contributing to a "non-union Alabama".^[18] Fies had been an outspoken advocate of abolishing the use of convict labour in the mines, however he moderated this position when it became apparent that this might strengthen the hand of the United Mine Workers union.^[19] Fies fired a worker who he discovered was acting as a union organiser.^[17]