Reading Anthracite Accident August 1 2007 St Clair Pa

Total Usa coal product, 1870–2018

The states Annual coal production past coal rank.

Trends in surface versus hole-and-corner mining of coal in the The states

The history of coal mining in the Us goes back to the 1300s, when the Hopi Indians used coal.^{[ citation needed ]} The first commercial utilize came in 1701, within the Manakin-Sabot area of Richmond, Virginia.^[1] Coal was the dominant power source in the United States in the late 1800s and early on 1900s, and although in rapid decline it remains a meaning source of free energy in 2019.

Coal became the largest source of free energy in the 1880s, when it overtook forest, and remained the largest source until the early 1950s, when coal was exceeded past petroleum. Coal provided more than than half of the nation'south free energy from the 1880s to the 1940s, and from 1906 to 1920 provided more than three-quarters of US energy.^[two]

19th century [edit]

At the starting time of the 19th century, coal mining was virtually all bituminous coal. In 1810, 176,000 short tons of bituminous coal, and ii,000 tons of anthracite coal, were mined in the Us. American coal mining grew speedily in the early on 1820s, doubling or tripling every decade. Anthracite mining overtook bituminous coal mining in the 1840s; from 1843 through 1868, more than anthracite was mined than bituminous coal. But the more than express deposits of anthracite could not satisfy the increasing demand for coal; from 1869, bituminous coal was the dominant grade of coal mined.^[three] Another reason for the refuse in anthracite was the turn down in its apply in iron smelting, where information technology was displaced by coke in boom furnaces after the Civil War. Coke stayed hard and porous and was able to back up the heavy column of ore and fuel in the big boom furnaces it enabled.^[iv]

Anthracite (or "hard" coal) exploitation began before the War of 1812 spurred by the interest and opportunism of the Wurt brothers of Philadelphia. Burning clean and smokeless, anthracite became the preferred fuel in cities, replacing forest by about 1850, the same pattern seen in Europe. The East became deforested, driving upwardly price of fuel forest. Anthracite from the Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region and later from West Virginia was valued for household employ because it burns cleanly with little ash. It was besides used in the early foundries of Philadelphia, New York, Newark and Allentown. The rich Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the big eastern cities, and about every major railroad in the Eastern United States such as the Reading Railroad, Lehigh & Erie, Key Railroad of New Jersey, Pennsylvania Railroad and Delaware and Hudson Railroad, extended lines into the anthracite fields. Many railroads began equally mining company shortline railroads. By 1840, annual hard coal output had passed the million-short ton marker, and and so quadrupled past 1850, and every bit information technology grew it pushed railroad structure, mining and steel production in a synergistic symbiosis.

In the mid-century Pittsburgh was the master marketplace. After 1850, soft coal, which is cheaper but dirtier, came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam engines, and was used to make coke for steel after 1870.^[5]

20th century [edit]

Full coal output soared until 1918; before 1890, it doubled every 10 years, going from 8.4 million short tons in 1850 to forty million in 1870, 270 million in 1900, and peaking at 680 1000000 brusque tons in 1918. New soft coal fields opened in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, as well as W Virginia, Kentucky and Alabama. The Keen Depression of the 1930s lowered the demand to 360 million brusque tons in 1932.^[6]

Mining history by state [edit]

Breaker boys, Woodward Coal Mines, Kingston, Pennsylvania., ca. 1900

Pennsylvania [edit]

This section needs expansion. You can assistance past adding to it. (Baronial 2013)

The offset anthracite coal was mined in 1768 by Obadiah Gore, a blacksmith, in the Wyoming Valley (Kingston, PA). This was in the very early days of colonists settling in Northeastern Pennsylvania from Connecticut. The Susquehanna Company was an trek that came into the Wyoming Valley and established the first 5 towns: Pittston, Plymouth, Wilkes-Barre, Nanticoke (later Hanover), and Forty Fort (afterwards Kingston). ^[7]
Nicholas Scull, a famous colonial surveyor issued a map in Philadelphia in 1770 that showed the location of 5 coal mines all in Schuylkill County: York Farm (Pottsville), almost Silverton Junction, near Llewellyn, and 2 more than around Ashland.
By 1807, fifty tons of coal was being sold past the Smith Brothers out of Plymouth, Pennsylvania. They exported information technology via barge on the Susquehanna River to Columbia, PA (Lancaster County). ^[8]
In Feb 1808, Wilkes-Barre resident, Jesse Fell, experimented with a successful open-air grate that kept anthracite called-for in low-yield household fires. The Smiths seized on Savage'due south discovery and returned to Columbia with more coal and instructions for local blacksmiths on preparing the grates.^[9]
Bituminous coal was get-go mined in Pennsylvania at "Coal Hill" (Mount Washington), just across the Monongahela River from the city of Pittsburgh. The coal was extracted from drift mines in the Pittsburgh coal seam, which outcrops along the hillside and transported past canoe to the nearby military garrison. By 1830, the metropolis of Pittsburgh consumed more than 400 tons per day of bituminous coal for domestic and light industrial use. ^[x]

The Lackawanna Valley in Pennsylvania was rich in anthracite coal and atomic number 26 deposits. Brothers George W. Scranton and Seldon T. Scranton moved to the valley in 1840 and settled in the five-house town of Slocum's Hollow (now Scranton) to establish an atomic number 26 forge.^[xi] ^[12] The Scrantons succeeded past using a technological innovation in atomic number 26 smelting, the "hot blast", adult in Scotland in 1828.^[eleven] The Scrantons also used black coal to make steel, rather than existing methods which used charcoal or bituminous coal.^[thirteen]

Photo of coal miners in West Virginia, 1908

Due west Virginia [edit]

In 1883, thousands of European immigrants and a large number of African Americans migrated to southern West Virginia to work in coal mines. These coal miners worked in company mines with company tools and equipment, which they were required to lease. Along with these expenses, the miners were deducted pay for housing hire and items they purchased from visitor stores. Many coal companies paid miners with company scrip (private coin), expert only at company-endemic stores.^[fourteen]

In addition to the poor economic condition, safety in the mines was a swell concern. West Virginia vicious backside other states in regulating mining conditions, and betwixt 1890 and 1912, had a college mine expiry rate than any other state. Due west Virginia was the site of the worst coal mining disaster to date, the Monongah Mining disaster of Monongah, W Virginia in 1907. The disaster was caused past the ignition of methane gas (also called "firedamp"), which in turn ignited the coal dust, killing 362 men. The disaster impelled the United States Congress to create the Agency of Mines.^[15]

Kentucky [edit]

This section needs expansion, with data nigh coal mining in eastern Kentucky.

Employment [edit]

Coal mining employment in the US, 1950-2017

Coal-mining employment increased rapidly in the late 1800s and early on 1900s, and peaked in 1923 at 798,000. Since then, the number of miners has fallen considerably since, due to mechanization. By 2022 it had fallen below 55,000.^[xvi]

Accidents [edit]

Coal mining fatalities in the United States 1900-2014 (information from US Dept. of Labor)

The rate of coal-mining fatalities has been declining since the early 1900s, both in the raw number of fatalities, and in the fatality rate per miner.

United Mine Workers union [edit]

Coal Producing States, 1889^[17]
State	Coal Production (thousands of curt tons)
Pennsylvania	81,719
Illinois	12,104
Ohio	9,977
Westward Virginia	half-dozen,232
Iowa	4,095
Alabama	3,573
Indiana	two,845
Colorado	2,544
Kentucky	ii,400
Kansas	2,221
Tennessee	ane,926

Since information technology was founded in 1890, the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union has played a key office in United States coal mining.

Some notable labor strikes and events include:

Bituminous Coal Miners' Strike of 1894
Lattimer Massacre, 1897
Battle of Virden, 1898
Coal Strike of 1902
Ludlow massacre, 1914
Herrin Massacre, 1921

Nether John L. Lewis, the United Mine Workers became the ascendant force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s, producing loftier wages and benefits.^[18]

Mechanization [edit]

Irish mining engineer Richard Sutcliffe invented the first conveyor belt for use in the coal mines of Yorkshire in the early on 1900s. Within the outset xl years of the 20th century, more than lx percent of US coal was loaded mechanically rather than by man ability. The history of the industry is the history of increasing mechanization.^[nineteen] As mechanization continued, fewer miners were needed, and some miners reacted with violence. One of the first machines to arrive at West Virginia's Kanawha field had to exist escorted by armed guards. The aforementioned machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was operated at a slow speed considering the superintendent feared labor troubles.

Despite resistance, mechanization replaced more than and more laborers. By 1940, over ii/3 of coal loaded in the large West Virginia fields was washed past auto. With the increment of mechanization came much higher wages for those yet employed, only hard times for the one-time miners because there were very few other jobs in or nigh the camps. Most moved to the cities to observe piece of work, or dorsum to the hills where they started.

US Coal product from 1949 to 2007(US Energy Information Administration)

In 1914 at the peak there were 180,000 anthracite miners; by 1970 but 6,000 remained. At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways and factories, and bituminous coal was used primarily for the generation of electricity. Employment in bituminous peaked at 705,000 men in 1923, falling to 140,000 past 1970 and 70,000 in 2003.

During World State of war Ii, the Solid Fuels Administration for War operated government-seized coal mines, either directly or through cooperation with successive Coal Mines Administrations.^[twenty]

In the 1960s a series of mergers saw coal product shift from small, independent coal companies to large, more diversified firms. Several oil companies and electricity producers acquired coal companies or leased Federal coal reserves in the west of the United States. Concerns that competition in the coal industry could turn down every bit a result of these changes were heightened by a sharp rise in coal prices in the wake of the 1973 oil crunch. Coal prices fell in the 1980s, partly in response to oil price decline, but primarily in response to the large increase in supply worldwide which was brought about by the earlier price surge. During this period, the industry in the U.S. moved to low-sulfur coal.^[21]

In 1987 Wyoming became the largest coal producing country. As of 2014, all simply one out of the xviii coal mines in Wyoming were strip mines.^[22] Wyoming's coal reserves total about 69.3 billion tons, or fourteen.ii% of the U.S. coal reserve.^[23]

Coal is used primarily to generate electricity, but the rapid driblet in natural gas prices later 2010 created severe competition.

Run across also [edit]

Coal mining in Colorado
Coal mining in the United states
Coal Region of Pennsylvania
Harrisburg Coal Field of Illinois
History of coal mining

Bibliography [edit]

Industry [edit]

Sean Patrick Adams, . "The U.s. Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century." EH.Cyberspace Encyclopedia, August 15, 2001 scholarly overview
Sean Patrick Adams, Sometime Rule, Industrial Democracy: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America. Johns Hopkins Academy Press, 2004.
Chandler, Alfred. "Black coal and the Beginnings of the 'Industrial Revolution' in the United States", Business organization History Review 46 (1972): 141–181. in JSTOR
DiCiccio, Carmen.Coal and Coke in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1996
Conley, Phil. History of West Virginia Coal Industry (Charleston: Education Foundation, 1960)
Eavenson, Howard. The First Century and a Quarter of the American Coal Industry (1942).
Flores, Verla R., and A. Dudley Gardner. Forgotten Frontier: A History of Wyoming Coal Mining (1989) online edition
Fred J. Lauver, "A Walk Through the Rise and Fall of Anthracite Might", Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine 27#1 (2001) online edition
Long, Priscilla. Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Encarmine Coal Industry. Paragon, 1989.
Robert H. Nelson. The Making of Federal Coal Policy (1983)
Parker, Glen Lawhon. The Coal Industry: A Study in Social Command (1940)
Powell, H. Benjamin. Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis. Jacob Cist and the Developing Market for Pennsylvania Anthracite. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978.
Rottenberg, Dan. In the Kingdom of Coal: An American Family unit and the Stone That Changed the Earth (2003), owners' perspective online edition
Schurr, Sam H., and Bruce C. Netschert. Energy in the American Economic system, 1850-1975: An Economic Study of Its History and Prospects. (1960).
United States Anthracite coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Study to the President on the Anthracite Coal Strike of May–October, 1902 By United states Anthracite Coal Strike (1903) online edition
Vietor, Richard H. K. and Martin V. Melosi; Environmental Politics and the Coal Coalition Texas A&One thousand Academy Press, 1980 online
Warren, Kenneth. Triumphant Capitalism: Henry Clay Frick and the Industrial Transformation of America. (1996).

Miners and unions [edit]

Aurand, Harold W. Coalcracker Culture: Piece of work and Values in Pennsylvania Anthracite, 1835-1935 2003
Blatz, Perry. Democratic Miners: Piece of work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875-1925. (1994).
Corbin, David Alan.Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922 (1981)
Coal Mines Administration, U.South, Department Of The Interior. A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1947. online
Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian Southward, 1880–1930 (1982)
Trick, Mayor. United We Stand: The United Mine Workers of America 1890-1990 (UMW 1990), detailed semiofficial union history.
Grossman, Jonathan. "The Coal Strike of 1902 – Turning Point in U.S. Policy" Monthly Labor Review October 1975. online
Harvey, Katherine. The All-time Dressed Miners: Life and Labor in the Maryland Coal Region, 1835-1910. Cornell University Printing, 1993.
Lantz; Herman R. People of Coal Town Columbia University Press, 1958; on southern Illinois; online
Lewis, Ronald L. Anthracite coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict. Academy Press of Kentucky, 1987.
Lunt, Richard D. Law and Guild vs. the Miners: Due west Virginia, 1907-1933 Archon Books, 1979, On labor conflicts of the early twentieth century.
Phelan, Craig. Divided Loyalties: The Public and Private Life of Labor Leader John Mitchell (1994)
Rössel, Jörg. Industrial Construction, Union Strategy and Strike Activity in Bituminous Coal Mining, 1881 - 1894 Social Science History 26 (2002): 1 - 32.
Roy, Andrew. A History Of The Coal Miners Of The United States, From The Development Of The Mines To The Shut Of The Anthracite Strike Of 1902 (1907) online full text
Trotter Jr., Joe William. Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern Westward Virginia, 1915-32 (1990)
U.S. Immigration Commission, Report on Immigrants in Industries, Office I: Bituminous Coal Mining, ii vols. Senate Certificate no. 633, 61st Cong., 2nd sess. (1911)
Wallace, Anthony F.C. St. Clair. A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry. (1981)
Ward, Robert D., and William West. Rogers, Labor Revolt in Alabama: The Great Strike of 1894 1965 online coal strike

References [edit]

^ Monitoring and Sampling Approaches to Assess Underground Coal Mine Dust Exposures, 2018, National Academies Press (Usa), Appendix Eastward.
^ Historical Statistics of the United states, 1957, US Department of Commerce, p.355.
^ Historical Statistics of the U.s., 1957, Us Department of Commerce.
^ Rosenberg, Nathan (1982). Within the Black Box: Technology and Economics . Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 89. ISBN0-521-27367-6.
^ * Frederick Moore Binder, Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and Its Utilization to 1860. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974.
^ Bruce C. Netschert and Sam H. Schurr, Energy in the American Economy, 1850-1975: An Economical Written report of Its History and prospects.
^ "History of Luzerne County | Luzerne County, PA".
^ https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-EF
^ https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-C9
^ "PA Mining History".
^ ^a ^b Yeomans, "36 Hours: Scranton, Pa.," New York Times, November one, 2002.
^ "The Bitter Battle," Time, October 19, 1962.
^ Lewis, "The Early on History of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company: A Report in Technological Accommodation," Pennsylvania Mag of History and Biography, Oct 1972.
^ ""West Virginia Partition of Culture and History"". Archived from the original on 2013-06-04. Retrieved 2013-06-04 .
^ ""U.s. Mine Rescue Clan"". Archived from the original on 2012-12-02. Retrieved 2013-06-04 .
^ "May 2022 National Manufacture-Specific Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates NAICS 212100 - Coal Mining". Bureau of Labor Statistics . Retrieved 1 Feb 2021.
^ Source: Thirteenth Demography of the United States, Vol. XI, Mines and Quarries, 1913, Table 4, p. 187
^ Dubofsky and Van Tine (1977)
^ Keith Dix, What'southward a Coal Miner to Do? The Mechanization of Coal Mining (1988)
^ "Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War [SFAW]". National Archives: Guide to Federal Records . Retrieved 2013-09-01 .
^ "Coal Mining Industry Report" IBISWorld, 2009
^ Coal production by state and mine type, Almanac Coal Written report 2014, United states of america Energy Information Assistants.
^ Manuel Lujan; Harry M. Snyder (1992). Surface Coal Mining Reclamation: fifteen Years of Progress, 1977-1992, Statistical Information. DIANE. p. 68. ISBN9780788142154.

This article incorporates public domain material from the National Archives and Records Assistants document: "Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War (SFAW)".

External links [edit]

"Reflections" Mining History, a short 2002 documentary on the history of American coal mining and mine condom, produced past the United States Mine Safety and Wellness Administration.
W Virginia coal mining history

cervantesthaught.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining_in_the_United_States