Vulcan appears in The Birmingham News on December 14, 1903. It is the first actual photograph in this collection of front pages.
Made by Vulcan's sculpture Giuseppe Moretti, this life sized statue "is not a wholly conventional figure of Vulcan, as it does not take into account any of his physical blemishes, but shows him to be a perfect man, possessing a great mind as well as vast bodily vigor and power ... The idea from which the pose and attitude of the Vulcan originated, is this: At the beginning of the use of iron by man it must have been a tremendous victory when a method was discovered for hardening the metal so that it would take a keen edge for a sword or a plow share ... it is not difficult to forgive him thje look of pride which lights up his beautiful features. It is not to much to say that hundreds of thousands of people will flock to the Birmingham district exhibit at St. Louis to see this grand statue standing as the Alabama Vulcan, 50 feet in height."
Meanwhile the Alabama miners are in convention. This, of course, is a big cog of Birmingham's economy for many decades, hence the adoration of Vulcan. It was no laughing matter, as Birmingham was striding toward its heyday.
It was no laughing matter in New York, in that brief under the Vulcan photo, where a former police officer was put to death for killing his wife. He'd faked insanity for more than a year, and then doctors gassed him with ether and earned a laughing confession.
Elsewhere in New York doctors were trying to stamp out an outbreak of smallpox. This was 1903 after all.