Charting the Course of Coal

In the Lackawanna Valley, men often spent their whole lives working underground in the anthracite mines, sometimes beginning at age 12, and their skill, supported by evolving technology, drove the coal mining industry and shaped the region. Using picks, shovels, and dynamite, teams of miners drilled and blasted into coal seams to produce the "black diamonds" that powered America's Industrial Revolution, generating about 35,000 tons of coal per day. Coal was hoisted to the surface and sent to breakers, where it was sorted, crushed, and separated into seven sizes, from lump and egg to rice and barley, with the smaller sizes used mostly for home heating. Slate, rocks, impure coal, and pieces too small for sale were removed and dumped onto culm piles, whose towering hills came to define mining-town landscapes. Sorted coal moved first by canal and, after the 1840s, increasingly by railroad, which could reach mountain mines that canals could not and soon came to dominate the industry by owning collieries and serving as major customers themselves. The largest railroads included the Reading Railroad, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. Railroads carried coal to wholesalers and distributors, whether company-owned or independent, for large industrial sales, while retailers supplied smaller quantities for homes, offices, and small industries with prompt delivery. The industry was self-supporting, as anthracite fueled iron furnaces that made railroad rail, powered the steam locomotives that hauled coal, ran breaker machinery and mine hoists, and served breweries, distilleries, glass works, and sugar refineries, while even coal ash found use in making bowling balls and filling golf balls.

Scranton, Pennsylvania · United States