Reports of disturbances in the bituminous fields of western Pennsylvania and Ohio follow the same pattern, as antebellum strikes tended to be localized and short-lived. The discovery of excellent coking coal in the Connellsville region of southwestern Pennsylvania spurred the aggressive growth of coke furnaces there. New York: The Century Company, 1931. “Anthracite in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, 1820-1845,” United States National Museum Bulletin 252 (1968): 91-141. But the more limited deposits of anthracite could not satisfy the increasing demand for coal, and from 1869 on, bitum… Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Colliers like Jacob Cist saw the shortage of British and Virginia coal in urban communities as an opportunity to promote the use of “stone coal.” Philadelphia’s American Philosophical Society and Franklin Institute enlisted the aid of the area’s scientific community to disseminate information to consumers on the particular needs of anthracite. Catch up on the BBC iPlayer. The cities of south Wales expanded with the increased levels of coal passing through the docks. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. This strike was successful, but failed to produce any lasting union presence in the D&H’s operations. Collier-people suffer much more than others - my good man died nine years since with bad breath; he lingered some years and was entirely off work 11 years before he died. The growth of St. Louis provided a major boost to the coal industries of Illinois and Missouri, and by 1850 colliers in the two states raised about 350,000 tons of coal annually. New pits were opened up in South Wales, Scotland, Lancashire and Yorkshire, and output increased from 2,600,000 tons in 1700 to over 10,000,000 in 1795. Harvey, Katherine. Later the medical profession gave it the name "pneumoconiosis". Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and Its Utilization to 1860. Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875-1925. The rise of the Welsh coal industry seemed unstoppable, with high quality coal available in massive quantities. Some of the men who owned mines became members of the gentry, and many more made huge sums of money. A new pit required new colliers and a new village to house them. In 1848 John Bates enrolled 5,000 miners and struck for higher pay in the summer of 1849. In many ways, this industry served as a major factor of American industrial growth throughout the nineteenth century. Along with this productivity came the erosion of many traditional skills cherished by experienced miners. As a result, coal mining needed larger amounts of capital as new systems of pumping, ventilation, and extraction required the implementation of steam power in mines. The opening of several links between Pennsylvania’s anthracite fields via the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (1820), the Schuylkill Navigation Company (1825), and the Delaware and Hudson (1829) insured that the flow of anthracite from mine to market would be cheap and fast. URL https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-us-coal-industry-in-the-nineteenth-century-2/, To join the newsletters or submit a posting go to, The US Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century. Even by as late 1892, 24% of miners' deaths in South Wales were caused by colliery accidents. A skilled miner and a handful of laborers could easily raise several tons of coal a day through the use of a “drift” or “slope” mine that intersected a vein of coal along a hillside. Although some deep mining took place as early as the 1500s (in North East England, and along the Firth of Forth coast) deep shaft mining in the UK began to develop extensively in the late 18th century, with rapid expansion throughout the 19th century and early 20th century when the industry peaked. Since the bituminous coal industry alone employed over 300,000 workers by 1900, many Americans kept a close eye on labor relations in this critical trade. By 1854, forty-six percent of all American pig iron had been smelted with anthracite coal as a fuel, and by 1860 anthracite’s share of pig iron was more than fifty-six percent. Warren, Kenneth. It was viewed as an area of industry with potentially huge rewards for the investors and speculators, who obtained licences to sink shafts or expand existing mines. Nye, David E.. Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies. Annual production in 1860 also passed twenty million tons for the first time in history. Adams, Sean Patrick. Scarcely a week passes without fatal explosions, of which little notice is taken beyond the immediate scenes of the calamities; nor is it till some thirty or forty human beings have been killed at one flash that public attention is aroused ; whilst the thousands who are sent to premature graves by the daily operating effects of the insidious atmospheric poison are altogether unminded. By the advent of the Civil War, coal industries appeared in at least twenty states. Miners were proud of their work. In the early years, larger pieces of coal were simply handpicked from pieces composed predominantly of mineral matter. Long, Priscilla. When mine managers brought increasing sophistication to the organizati… Laing, James T. “The Early Development of the Coal Industry in the Western Counties of Virginia,” West Virginia History 27 (January 1966): 144-155.

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