USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania : from its first beginnings to the present time, including chapters of newly-discovered early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume V > Part 11
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coal at Columbia, Colonel Lee found that he and his associate had lost $1,500 on the operation.
Reduction in transportation cost rather than in cost of mining, therefore, was the vital need of the time. The advent of canals, and later of railways, brought about this reduction in carrying cost, but only after many years had passed, years in which anthracite coal never failed to dangle alluring prospects before capitalists, and never failed to use up most of the available capital Despite losses, discouragements, failures, the development of the anthracite coalfields went steadily forward. This is shown positively in the statistics of shipments from the Wyoming coalfield. As given by George R. Culp, in 1890, in an address then delivered before the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, the figures from 1807 to 1820 are :
Year
Tons
Year
Tons
Year
Tons
1807
55
1812
500
1817.
1,100
1808.
150
1813.
500
1818.
1,200
1809.
200
1814.
700
1819.
1,400
1810.
350
1815
1,000
1820.
2,500
18II.
450
1816.
1,000
The next decade, however,
That was the period of the small operator. brought several large corporations into the field. The Lehigh Coal and Navi- gation Company was incorporated in February, 1822, a merger of the Lehigh Coal Mining Company and the Lehigh Navigation Company, both of which companies had been organized, with Smith and Hazard as the chief promoters, in 1818. This early consolidation of mining and transportation corporations created a strong company which was destined to have a leading place in anthracite mining for a century. Baltimore capitalists, in the corporate name of the Baltimore and Pittsburg Coal Company, took over Colonel Butler's operation at Coalbrook, and made the Baltimore Mine famous. The 2,500 tons of coal shipped in 1820 seems an insignificant output when compared with the production of a decade later. The United States Geological Survey's statistics of anthracite coal begin with the year 1829. The production in that year was 138,086 tons. Ten years later, in 1839, we find the anthracite ship- ments reaching into the seventh column, with an output of 1,008,322 tons. Twenty years later, it stepped almost into the next column, with an output of 9,619,77.1 tons. Thirty-two years later (1891), the annual output exceeded fifty millions (50,665,431 tons), and the peak reached in 1917 was almost a hundred millions (99,611,811 tons of 2,000 pounds).
In all their fanciful dreams, with all their optimism, initiative and courage, the pioneer operators probably never imagined it possible to mine and ship and sell in one year even the odd thousands of the output of the year 1917. Of course, it never could have been done by methods such as they used. Expan- sion came steadily in the evolution of methods of handling the commodity in all phases of its journey from the coal bed to the ashpit.
Prior to 1818 it had not seemed feasible to use powder in the mining of anthracite coal; but in that year Abijah Smith and Company again stepped into pioneer place. John Flanigan was employed expressly to bore and blast the coal. Flanigan was, writes Colonel Ernest G. Smith, "the first man who ever bored a hole and applied the powder blast in the anthracite coal of Penn- sylvania." How much powder Flanigan used to shoot down the few hundred tons of coal shipped by his employers in that year is not recorded, but he proved the practicability of its use, and in the century of mining since Flani- gan's time the powder-blast has lightened the labor and increased the output of almost all anthracite miners. Nowadays, every anthracite miner who works steadily uses about $2,000 worth of powder in a year.
W .- B .- 5
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Preparation of coal, emphasized nowadays by the pyramidal breakers that vie with the mountains and culm piles as topographical features of the coal region, was a science unheeded, and indeed unneeded, in the pioneer days of mining. Prior to 1830, preparation of coal inside or outside of the mine meant no more than to load the lumps and let the remainder lie. After wedging or blasting his coal from the vein in the drift or tunnel, the miner, ordinarily, loaded the lumps of coal on to his wheel-barrow, and dumped it into the barge or ark, or into a long chute which had its lower end in the barge. The hand- rake was introduced in 1830, or thereabouts, and its use in the mine workings at that time may be deemed the first step taken in the preparation of coal. With the rake the miner, after loading all the large lumps shot down, was required to make a second selection. The rake's teeth were one and three- quarter inches apart, and what the rake did not catch was left in the mine. What a number of sizes of marketable coal this residue would represent in the classification of today! The salable grades include specks of coal three sixty-fourths of an inch big.
In 1830, with the completion of the canal to Nanticoke, the way was opened for better communication with Philadelphia. A canal boat, the "Wyoming," loaded with coal, voyaged all the way from Nanticoke to Philadelphia and landed its cargo of ten tons safely. Ice closed navigation before the boat could complete the return voyage, and it was not until 1834 that a loaded boat successfully made the "round trip" betwen Philadelphia and the coal field in one season. Still the coal operators were imbued with optimism and began more closely to consider the domestic demand of the metropolis.
They began to prepare the coal outside of the mine. This, the first attempt to break the coal after mining, seems a crude process by comparison with the breaker systems of the present, but it was at least an effort in the right direc- tion. The coal from the drifts would be dumped on to a perforated iron plate. There, men with picks and hammers would break the coal small enough to pass through the perforations to bar screens below, the openings of the latter being about the same as those of the hand-rake used in the mine. Later, revolving screens were introduced. Revolved by man or mule, these screens separated the commercial sizes of coal from the smaller grades for which there was no market.
This waste material-or, to be more exact, wasted material, for it was coal of excellent quality-form the bases of the culm-piles of today-those unsightly features which are the unavoidable result of the mining and prepara- tion of coal.
For almost a century coal has been heaped up on these so-called culm-piles, larger coal in the early years, but at all times good burnable coal. Anthracite being so much superior to bituminous coal for household use, it has an almost impregnable position in the domestic market, but for steaming purposes its advantage over the bituminous product is not so great. The so-called "steam" sizes, c. g., the smaller grades of broken anthracite, down almost to dust, that were the residue of breaker operations in the anthracite coalfields, would have been unsalable, were it not for the great advantage that anthracite offers in its smokelessness. Anti-smoke ordinances in large cities created some demand for the "steam sizes" of anthracite, and the extraordinary industrial fuel demands of the World War period firmly established a new industry-that of recovering the good coal from the culm-piles-in the anthracite region. It was found that exposure to the elements wrought no noticeable depreciation in the hard coal of the anthracite fields, and as, the operators mined only the cleanest coal in the wasteful early days when the culm-piles began to rise, much that is now being recovered from the culm-piles is coal of better quality than most of the freshly-mined coal of today. Of course, much of the mate- rial that makes the culm-pile is not clean coal-in fact, is not coal at all. For
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that reason, the process of recovering the wasted coal of former years is to all intents a cleansing of it, or separation of it, from the impurities-shale, slate, or "bone"-that were also thrown upon the culm-pile. Hence, the process is known as "washing," and the product is known as "washery" coal.
Washery coal came into its own during the World War. At that time, there was vital need of conserving and of controlling all the mineral resources of the Nation. The National Fuel Administration's engineers then whipped up coal production. Never in Anthracite history was so much coal mined ; vet it was not enough, so the experts gave careful thought to the utilization of what the culm-piles contained. Government engineers, in 1918, estimated that these piles contained fifty millions of tons of merchantable coal, and that of this quantity one-fifth would be coal of pea size and above.
It was not a newly-found use for the waste-piles of the mines. Culm-pile coal was being shipped in substantial quantities even before the twentieth century dawned. Indeed, about a hundred million tons have been recovered, and the piles are still almost as evident as in the old days. The State Depart- ment of Mines did not begin to separately record the shipments of washery coal until the year 1894. In that year 386,960 tons were recovered, so even at that time the operations were not insignificant. In 1900, the total of washery coal shipped was 1,055.425 tons. Twice as much was recovered in 1901, four times as much in 1903, and 5,630,169 tons in 1907. This was about the aver- age yearly output during the next five years. The production in 1913 was 2,934,157 tons, but that was a year of general trade depression. The World War began in 1914, and, after the first brief period of bewilderment, had con- siderable effect upon industrial America. The effect was felt even by the washery industry. In 1916, 4,432.606 tons were recovered, and in 1917-18, the years of America's part in the war, the output of washery coal was more than thirteen millions of tons. This peak production was not maintained, but in 1922 the culm-piles gave up 2,525.402 tons of their fuel reserve. The total quantity of culm-pile coal recovered during the period 1894-1922 was 97,538,- 591 tons.
The demand for washery coal is not now very active, but all the good coal contained in the culm-piles will, undoubtedly, find a market in due time. Cer- tainly, it is gratifying to know that the coal which seemed to have been wasted in the first years of coal preparation was, in fact, merely stored for later use. At least, this was so in some cases. Some immense culm-piles have, indeed, been wasted, having burned themselves to ashes where they lay-ignited, it is supposed, by spontaneous combustion. Still, an appreciable industry lies in these culm-pile operations of the anthracite regions. In 1919, forty-one coal washeries were in operation in the Wyoming coalfield, thirteen in the Lehigh field, and twenty-seven in the Schuylkill.
The washeries, of course, cannot find a coal market for the shale, or slate, that one also finds in the culm-piles, but science seems to be casting hungry eyes even toward the shale. A new process of extracting oil from coal shale is now in an advanced stage of experiment, and oil refiners are looking hope- fully to the future, in this connection.
Improvements in the methods and appliances used in the preparation of coal for market kept pace with the need of the time, though hardly, it seems, with the degree of improvement in transportation. The perforated iron plate and the breaking by hand was good enough for the period of canals; but it continued even into the period of the railways, when most things seemed to take a quicker step.
Capitalists and legislators began to discuss railway projects in the 'twen- ties. As the 'twenties passed into the 'thirties some railway schemes were in process of development; and as the 'thirties passed into the 'forties many ambitious projects of connecting the coalfields with the principal markets, by
68
means of the iron roads, were either in operation, or well advanced in con- struction. Before the financial stringency of 1857 totally suspended all rail- road building, the anthracite coal operators were shipping to market, mostly by the iron road, eight or nine millions of tons of coal a year.
As may be supposed, the incessant burrowing into the coal veins for such stupendous quantities yearly had driven the working face farther and farther out of sight. No longer was the operator able to choose only the brightest, cleanest veins that outcropped. Many of the clean beds that had attracted the pioneer miners had been entirely exhausted, or had been worked so far under- ground as to be inaccessible by "drifts," or tunnels, from the point where the vein had outcropped on the mountainside. Other beds which formerly had been considered worthless, owing to the large number of partings-i. e., shaly streaks in the coal bed-had to be operated to maintain the output. This meant dirtier coal, and more labor in preparing it for market. It was necessary to pick the impurities out of the mined coal. The breaker work was also increasing, in other ways, the marketable sizes constantly changing, as smaller and smaller sizes became salable for household consumption. It was not difficult to meet the call for cleaning the coal. Boys could be employed, to the number required, to pick out the shale from the coal, but it was not an easy matter to devise means of improving the methods of breaking and screening.
In 1853, mechanical rolls and breakers were introduced, but it was not until 1860 that hand-operated breakers were entirely superseded by the mechanical. In the 'fifties, George B. Markle, a young carpenter with a mechanical bent, became the righthand man of Ario Pardee, one of the leading operators of the Lehigh field. Markle saw that breaking methods were crude. He soon saw a way of improving them, but he could not get his idea into the heads of the mine mechanics. However, here his skill in carpentry served him. With a penknife, he made a model, in wood, of the new type of breaker he wished built. It was to all intents the type still in use, and those who have seen one of these towering structures, and also an ordinary stone-breaker, will have some idea of how revolutionary the Markle breaker was. He has been called the "Father of the Breaker," and he seems to have deserved the title.
The new mechanical type of breaker came with the advent of steam in the operation. The old type of bar screen was superseded by the revolving. and, after many years, the latter gave way to the shaking screen. Eventually, mechanical slate-pickers displaced the breaker-boys. Other changes occurred, and changes will continue to come in the preparation of anthracite for market. Processes, however, have reached almost the limit in one respect. Prepara- tion, nowadays, has, as its main object, the cleaning of coal, rather than the sizing of it. Sizing has almost run its full course, the range being down now almost to nothing. However, the problems of cleaning, or of ridding the coal of the impurities mined with it, are ever increasing. The old dry methods of cleaning the coal are now almost obsolete. The wet methods give surer results. Most of the anthracite coal now mined "is cleaned in jigs, or by the Chance Sand Flotation method, or on tables, or by the new Rhelauveur process."
It is quite obvious that steam wrought as great a revolution in coal mining as in transportation methods. In the 'thirties, the average enlightened citizen looked with awe upon the railway coaches, dreading that the strap rails might curl up, pierce the floor of the coach and impale him. By the 'fifties, however, the average industrial worker was a little better versed in the ways and uses of steam.
With the advent of steam, the day of drift-mining began to wane. Until the 'fifties, all mining was above the water level, but then, with steam har- nessed, power pumps could be used. So the operators began to sink shafts
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and work below the water level. Mr. Ashmead writes: "Pumps have changed considerably from the old type of Cornish pump to the modern electric driven centrifugal pump, which is a great advancement, as is also the amount of water pumped. In the early history of the region, it was impossible to oper- ate the mines if there was any water, but now the average amount of water pumped for every ton of coal produced amounts to 10.5 tons. There is one mine in the Wyoming Valley that pumps 88 tons of water for every ton of coal produced, and that mine burns 25 per cent. of its output just to pump water. There is sufficient water pumped yearly in the anthracite mines to raise the level of Lake George, in New York State, 29 feet, or putting it another way, there is more water pumped from the mines daily than there is used in New York City." New York City, by the way, consumes 846,900,000 gallons of water in an average day.
With the sinking of shafts some former methods of operation ended. No longer was it possible, for instance, for a horse and wagon to back into the workings, take a load of coal, take it out of the mine and dump it at the con- sumer's door. No longer could the miner load his wheel-barrow in the cham- ber and wheel it out to the wharf and there dump its contents into a boat. That much maligned, but, nevertheless, most useful beast-of-burden, the mine mule, was a factor in mining long before the time of the shafts. No doubt, long before the advent of steam, the mule was jogging along between the "strap" rails of mine passages, fractiously pulling what the miner formerly had had to push out of the drift himself. Those were the happy days for the mule. Then, at least, he had frequent glimpses of sunlight. Later, with the sinking of shafts, he was to pass the greater part of his working years under- ground. Still, progress rarely follows sentimental lines. Its goal is utility ; in its never-ending search for more useful servants, utility is the only object that catches its eye. So there came a time, in anthracite mining, when mule- power had to give way to horse-power-horse-power of a lively though not living type-in underground haulage. For a time, the mule still held his own against the iron monster, for in very many mines the steam locomotive could not be used underground, owing to the gaseous nature of the coal and the con- sequent danger of explosion ; but, when, in the late 'eighties, electrical appli- ances became the vogue and found their way into mining operations, the place of the mule in mining seemed seriously challenged, if not taken.
The first electric locomotive used in an anthracite mine was that taken into the Lykens Colliery of the Susquehanna Collieries Company in 1887; and in the forty years since then-years of steady progress and of incessant search for better mining methods-power motors or locomotives, of the electric or compressed air types, have found places in almost all large mines, superseding the mule. at least, on all the main roads underground.
The mule is still used to haul empty cars from the distributing points on the main roads to the working face, or mine chamber, also to haul loaded cars from the working face to the mobilization points, where the trains of coal are made up; but from those junctions outwards to the pit-shaft, the mule is dis- placed by the locomotive. In some of the large mines, mule haulage has given way entirely before the quicker mechanical means, but in most of the mines the mule is still favored for the lighter hauls. Hence, it happens that, in anthracite mines, there are still about 10,000 mules whose chances of airing their heels in the sunlight hinge almost entirely upon the possibility of labor disputes among their masters.
Electricity has played a most important part in the improvement of mining. It has reached out its helping hand into almost all phases of mining operations. It pumps the water, hauls the coal, lights the chamber, protects the worker, forces in the fresh air and draws out the foul, works the breaker, hoists the
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coal, and, in general, helps to make the mine workers' occupation a lighter and safer one.
Ventilation, in the early days of mining, was not a serious problem. Indeed, it was not a problem at all, because the miners were able to work with only natural ventilation. But when the workings went farther and farther from the fresh air, the difficulties of mining increased more and more. At first, furnaces were resorted to. They were of doubtful benefit. They created currents of air, but also dangers of explosion. So furnace ventilation soon became obsolete. Since the advent of the electric ventilating fan, the installation of the furnace method of ventilation has been forbidden by law.
Bituminous, e. g., soft coal, mining seems more dangerous than the anthra- cite mining, because of the explosive dust that is ever present. Poisonous gases are to be found in all mines, however. Ceaseless vigilance is neces- sary. The three venomous demons that ever seek the life of the miner are known as choke-damp, fire-damp and after-damp. The first and last of the demons are the silent gases that come upon mine workers unawares, and stifle them, but cause no explosion. Fire-damp, however, if given the slight- est opportunity, would blast away in a second all chance that a mine full of men would have of life. So, to clear the mine of gases, the ventilating fans must whirl night and day. They must never stop, for the enemy never sleeps.
Some of the anthracite mines seem comparatively safe ; others, but for cease- less precautions, would be constant death traps: "One mine in the northern anthracite field produces over ninety tons of methane, or white-damp. or fire- damp, each twenty-four hours from one of its shafts." If there were not two shafts mining would be impossible. At all events, since the Avondale disaster of 1869, which trapped one hundred and eight men in a one-shaft mine, the law compels all mines to have two shafts, one for hoisting and the other for air-and in emergency for escape of mine workers also. Through the one shaft, giant ventilating fans, that revolve with a rim-speed of a mile a minute, force a current of fresh air continuously. Out of the other shaft, powerful exhaust fans suck the gases that are driven before the fresh air. The latter, by an ingenious arrangement of doors and curtains and bridges, has been prevented from taking the shortest cut to the exit, and forbidden to find its way out until it has gone the full round of the mine workings, driving out the poisonous gases from every heading, passage, and chamber, making it possible for the miner to work in comparative safety, while he burrows in the catacombs for more and more of the commodity that American householders demand. Ven- tilation is so good in some mines that naked lights are used by the miners, but generally, nowadays, the mine workers carry electric lights in their caps.
It is estimated that for every ton of coal produced in the anthracite fields, II.5 tons of gases are expelled from the mine workings-enough in a year to set the whole population of New York State, or of Pennsylvania, gasping in a layer, house-high. of gases as deadly as any that were let loose during the World War.
Accident hazard statistics of mining show some surprising facts. Inas- much as bituminous coal dust is highly explosive and that anthracite dust is entirely non-explosive, one would suppose that the fatality rates would be much higher in bituminous mining than in anthracite. In fact, taking the statistics of eight recent years, they are not. Undoubtedly, the danger of a general disaster is greater in bituminous mines, but the accident hazards daily before the anthracite miner are much greater than those risked by the bituminous miner. The thick pitching seams of the anthracite coalfields make timbering much more difficult than in the thinner and flatter coal beds of the bituminous areas. In safeguarding the lives of the robbers (miners) who steal from the earth the dead forests (coal) of the Paleozoic era, we sacrifice to Mother Earth vast tracts of living forests every year. It is estimated that for
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every ton of coal taken from antharcite beds about fourteen board-feet of timbering is put in-to keep the roof from falling. In any one of recent years of anthracite mining almost a billion board-feet of lumber have been needed for mine timbering ; yet many miners lose their lives by falls of roof. Again, the dangerous gases pocket are more in the irregular pitching formation of the working places and breasts of anthracite mines than in the flatter bituminous workings. Moreover, more blasting is needed in the hard anthracite than in the soft bituminous. Nevertheless, the safety work done-with miners, opera- tors, and State cooperating-in recent years is so thorough that the loss of life underground among one thousand anthracite miners in a year of steady work barely averages five workers. Among bituminous mine workers the highest percentage of fatality is among motormen ; in anthracite mining, the highest percentage is among the miners and miner's helpers.
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