The economy of Birmingham, Alabama, The Magic City, depends largely on the throbbing steel mills which ring its borders. While whites may hold any job and earn at any wage level, Negroes in the city are caught in a viscious circle of poverty; discriminatory employment practices prevent them from rising to even the most basic managerial positions. Not only does such discrimination strangle the economy of the Negro community, but it causes imbalance in education and housing and drives many of the community's more talented members away in search of better jobs.

To erase discrimination in the Birmingham mills and in countless similar situations, North and South, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act

* Bans discrimination by employers or unions with a hundred or more employees or members.

* Establishes a commission to investigate alleged discrimination and use persuasion to end it.

* Authorizes the Attorney General to sue if he believes any person or group is engaged in a pattern or practice of resistance to the title.

A compromise in Congress during the debate delayed enforcement of the section a year, until this July 2. But President Johnson was given the power to appoint the five man Equal Opportunity Commission as soon as he had signed the bill last summer.

Now, nearly ten months later, the President has yet to make the necessary appointments. His failure delays the completion of preliminary tasks given the Commission by law and, in effect will mean that legal action authorized under the title will be further postponed, since it is the Commission's job to investigate charges of discrimination and recommend legal proceedings to the Justice Department.

The President may be withholding the appointments to use as leverage on management and labor to prevent a national steel walkout. But even if his reasons are not so misplaced, his tardiness only frustrates the implementation of needed legislation protecting a vital civil right.