text: In Alabama, industrialization was generating a ravenous appetite for the states coal and iron ore. Production was booming, and unions were attempting to organize unincarcerated miners. Convicts provided an ideal captive work force: cheap, usually docile, unable to organize and available when unincarcerated laborers went on strike." The Southern agrarian economy did not accommodate convict leasing as well as the industrial economy did, whose jobs were often unappealing or dangerous, offering hard-labor and low pay.  The competition, expansion, and growth of mining and steel companies also created a high demand for labor, but union labor posed a threat to expanding companies.  As unions bargained for higher wages and better conditions, often organizing strikes in order to achieve their goals, the growing companies would be forced to agree to union demands or face abrupt halts in production.  The rate companies paid for convict leases, which paid the laborer nothing, was regulated by government and state officials who entered the labor contracts with companies.  "The companies built their own prisons, fed and clothed the convicts, and supplied guards as they saw fit." (Blackmon 2001) Alabamas use of convict leasing was commanding; 51 of its 67 counties regularly leased convicts serving for misdemeanors at a rate of about $5–20 per month, equal to about $160–500 in 2015.  Although the influence of labor unions forced some states to move away from the profitable convict lease agreements and run traditional prisons, plenty of companies began substituting convict labor in their operations in the twentieth century.  "The biggest user of forced labor in Alabama at the turn of the century was Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co., [of] U.S. Steel"