Social, cultural, and academic life flourished in Bessemer during its formative years as the population increased.
Churches, schools, and civic institutions, like the Twentieth Century Literary Club, emerged in the Bessemer area. A new library for the town was constructed with funds from the famed industrialist Andrew Carnegie. [The building still stands, as the offices of the Bessemer Area Chamber of Commerce.]
Music and theatre groups in nearby Birmingham gave regular performances in Bessemer, while musicians like W.C. Handy, the "St. Louis Blues" and "Memphis Blues" composer who worked at the U.S. Pipe plant in Bessemer entertained. In education, Bessemer boasted the Birmingham area's first medical school a half century before the inception of the medical college at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB). Montezuma University, founded in 1896, offered courses of study in both graduate and undergraduate fields.
The presence of the steel industry, which attracted a great number of laborers, secured Bessemer's prosperity and population growth through the early part of the Twentieth Century, but left the city heavily dependent upon that one industry for its economic stability. During the recessions of 1893 and 1907, the city suffered from its reliance on steel as unemployment rose and consumer purchases fell. But both of these periods were short in duration; each time, the city rebounded with greater productivity and increased employment.
The Panic of 1907, however, left the Bessemer area's largest corporation - the Tennessee Coal, Iron, & Railroad Company (TCI) - saddled with a $5 million debt, which it was forced to alleviate through a stock sell to United States Steel (USS) Company. When USS took over the steel operations of the TCI plant in Bessemer, company officials committed resources to the development of the Bessemer area. The company established a welfare program for sick and injured (including the formation of a medical clinic headed by Dr. Lloyd Noland, a physician instrumental in discovering the cause of the Yellow Fever virus which was plaguing workers building the Panama Canal), constructed houses for workers (many of which are still standing), and even established a school system that won honors nationally for excellence.