History of coal mining in the United States

Anthracite clean and smokeless, became the preferred fuel in cities, replacing wood by about 1850. Anthracite from the Northeastern Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

Coal Region

The Coal Region is a term used to refer to an area of Northeastern Pennsylvania in the central Appalachian Mountains comprising Lackawanna, Luzerne, Columbia, Carbon, Schuylkill, Northumberland, and the extreme northeast corner of Dauphin counties....

and later from West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

was typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it. The rich Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the big eastern cities, and a few major railroads such as the Reading Railroad

Reading Company

The Reading Company , usually called the Reading Railroad, officially the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road and then the Philadelphia and Reading Railway until 1924, operated in southeast Pennsylvania and neighboring states...

controlled the anthracite fields. By 1840, hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark, and then quadrupled by 1850.

Bituminous coal

Bituminous coal

Bituminous coal or black coal is a relatively soft coal containing a tarlike substance called bitumen. It is of higher quality than lignite coal but of poorer quality than Anthracite...

(or "soft coal") mining came later. In the mid-century Pittsburgh was the principal market. After 1850 soft coal, which is cheaper but dirtier, came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam engine

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...

s, and was used to make coke

Coke (fuel)

Coke is the solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal. Cokes from coal are grey, hard, and porous. While coke can be formed naturally, the commonly used form is man-made.- History :...

for steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

after 1870.

Total coal output soared until 1918; before 1890, it doubled every ten years, going from 8.4 million short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870, 270 million in 1900, and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918. New soft coal fields opened in Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

, Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

and Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, as well as West Virginia

West Virginia

, Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

and Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

. The Great Depression

Great Depression in the United States

The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October, 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement...

of the 1930s lowered the demand to 360 million short tons in 1932.

Labor troubles

Coal Producing States, 1889
State	Coal Production (thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania	81,719
Illinois	12,104
Ohio	9,977
West Virginia	6,232
Iowa	4,095
Alabama	3,573
Indiana	2,845
Colorado	2,544
Kentucky	2,400
Kansas	2,221
Tennessee	1,926

United Mine Workers

The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners and coal technicians. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada...

(UMW) labor union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

was barely three years old when it called the Bituminous Coal Miners' Strike of 1894. This violent two-month strike closed mines from Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

to Iowa

Iowa

Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

, but it was unsuccessful and almost broke the union. After the Lattimer Massacre

Lattimer massacre

The Lattimer massacre was the violent deaths of 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite coal miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897. The miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicity, were shot and killed by a Luzerne County sheriff's...

of 1897 and the Battle of Virden

Battle of Virden

The Battle of Virden was a labor union conflict in Virden, southern Illinois, involving the United Mine Workers of America in October 1898. The battle left four security guards and seven striking mine workers dead, with more than 30 people wounded....

in Illinois

Illinois

in 1898, the UMW was successful in its strike against bituminous coal

Bituminous coal

Bituminous coal or black coal is a relatively soft coal containing a tarlike substance called bitumen. It is of higher quality than lignite coal but of poorer quality than Anthracite...

mines in the Midwest in 1900. However, the union's Coal Strike of 1902

Coal Strike of 1902

The Coal Strike of 1902 was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners were on strike asking for higher wages, shorter workdays, and the recognition of their union...

against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national political crisis in 1902. President Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

brokered a compromise solution that kept the flow of coal going, and won higher wages and shorter hours for the miners, but did not include recognition of the union as a bargaining agent.

The UMW called strikes in Colorado's coal fields

Coal mining in Colorado

Early coal mining in Colorado, a state of the United States was spread across the state. Some early coal mining areas are currently inactive, including the Denver Basin Raton Basin coal fields along the Front Range...

, one of which resulted in the Ludlow Massacre

Ludlow massacre

The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914....

of 1914. Neutralized by the dispatch of federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre, the UMW pulled out of Colorado for more than a decade. Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about 1920, when it collapsed after a failed national strike.

Coal mining

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

became the key industry in Southern Illinois at the turn of the century, with cities such as Harrisburg

Harrisburg, Illinois

Harrisburg is a city and township in Saline County, Illinois, United States. It is located about southwest of Evansville, Indiana, southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. The 2010 population was 9,017, with a township population of 10,790. It is the county seat of Saline County...

, a bituminous distribution hub, prospering with a population of 16,000 people during the 1920s. Large for the small farm towns of region during the time. The city was visited by many prominent politicians, and boasted the tallest building in Southern Illinois outside of East St. Louis. Union miners all over the nation went on strike in 1922; during this phase, 20 people were killed during a riot in Herrin

Herrin, Illinois

Herrin is a city in Williamson County, Illinois, United States. The population was 12,501 at the 2010 census. It is home to Country Musicstar David Lee Murphy, the hometown of baseball's Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman, and the hometown of San Diego State University men's basketball coach Steve...

, in Williamson County. It was called the Herrin Massacre

Herrin massacre

The Herrin Massacre took place in June 1922 in Herrin, Illinois. Three union miners were killed in a strike-related confrontation on June 21. The following day, 19 of of fifty strikebreakers and union guards were killed, many of them in a brutal way...

and the county was known as Bloody Williamson for years to come.

In 1927, the Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World

The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...

(IWW) led a state-wide strike in Colorado's coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Mine Massacre

Columbine Mine massacre

The first Columbine Massacre, sometimes called the Columbine Mine massacre to distinguish it from the Columbine High School massacre, occurred in 1927, in the town of Serene, Colorado. A fight broke out between Colorado state police and a group of striking coal miners, during which the unarmed...

. Immediately after that massacre, the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company

Rocky Mountain Fuel Company

The Rocky Mountain Fuel Company was a coal mining company located in Colorado, operating mines in Louisville, Lafayette, and other locations north and west of Denver. The mine was founded by John J. Roche to supply coal to sugar beet factories. During the 1930s, the company was the...

's president Josephine Roche

Josephine Roche

Josephine Aspinwall Roche was a Colorado humanitarian, industrialist, activist, and politician. She was born in Neligh, Nebraska, and raised in Omaha, attending private girls' schools there before matriculating at Vassar College in 1904. There she double-majored in economics and classics, and...

announced that her company would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor

American Federation of Labor

The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...

. In announcing this policy, the company avoided recognizing the radical IWW. Thus, the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract in Colorado.

Strikes were very common, the rhetoric employed about exploitation was effective in mobilizing strikers. Detailed analysis of historical data by Fishback (1992) shows that mining wages were as high, if not higher, than those in manufacturing industry; that the prices in company stores were rarely higher than those in independent stores; and that miners who were dissatisfied with working conditions in a particular mining camp could either "vote with their feet" by migrating elsewhere or use the "voice" of collective union action to resist the threatened abuse.

Mechanization

Richard Sutcliffe

Richard Sutcliffe was an Irish-born mining engineer and inventor. He was born on a farm in Tipperary Ireland and worked at coal mines in Ireland between 1857 and 1885. He moved to Barnsley, England in August 1885. In 1892 he invented the world's first coal cutting machine. In 1905 he invented...

invented the first conveyor belt

Conveyor belt

A conveyor belt consists of two or more pulleys, with a continuous loop of material - the conveyor belt - that rotates about them. One or both of the pulleys are powered, moving the belt and the material on the belt forward. The powered pulley is called the drive pulley while the unpowered pulley...

for use in coal mines in the early 1900s. Within the first forty years of the 20th century, there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of coal that was loaded mechanically rather than by man power. The history of the industry is the history of steady mechanization. As mechanization continued, fewer miners were needed, and some miners reacted with violence. One of the first machines to arrive at West Virginia

West Virginia

’s Kanawha field had to be escorted by armed guards. The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles.

Despite resistance, mechanization replaced more and more laborers. By 1940, over 2/3 of coal loaded in the large West Virginia fields was done by machine. With the increase of mechanization came much higher wages for those still employed, but hard times for the former miners because there were very few other jobs in or near the camps. Most moved to the cities to find work, or back to the hills where they started.

Post-World War II

Under John L. Lewis

John L. Lewis

John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960...

, the UMW became the dominant force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s, producing high wages and benefits. Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite for home heating after 1945, and that sector collapsed.

In 1914 at the peak there were 180,000 anthracite miners; by 1970 only 6,000 remained. At the same time steam engine

Steam engine

s were phased out in railways and factories, and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of electricity

Electricity

Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...

. Employment in bituminous peaked at 705,000 workers in 1923, falling to 140,000 by 1970 and 70,000 in 2003. Environmental restrictions on high-sulphur coal, contributed to rise of very large-scale strip mining

Surface mining

Surface mining , is a type of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit are removed...

in the West, especially the Powder River Basin

Powder River Basin

The Powder River Basin is a geologic region in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its coal deposits. The region supplies about 40 percent of coal in the United States. It is both a topographic drainage and geologic structural basin...

fields in Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

.

UMW membership among active miners fell from 160,000 in 1980 to only 16,000 in 2005, as coal mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the new coal fields. The American share of world coal production remained steady at about 20% from 1980 to 2005.

External links

West Virginia coal mining history

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Labor troubles

Mechanization

Post-World War II

See also

Industry

Miners and unions

External links