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 12
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Although the preparation of anthracite coal, during recent decades, has become almost an exact science, it does not seem that there has been a cor- responding advance in mining methods. The old "room and pillar method of mining, or the pillar and breast system" are still in general use in the anthra- cite field. The engineering problems have been met. as they arose, in ways that put the anthracite mining engineer upon a high professional plane for efficiency, ingenuity, and resourcefulness : yet, in some phases of the actual mining, the bituminous methods seem to be more modern than the anthracite. Coal-cutting machines are common in the soft coal areas, but are the exception in the anthracite fields.
There is, however, a natural reason for this. Generally the hardness of the coal, the unevenness of the floor, and the steep pitch of the anthracite veins, prevent common use of mechanical coal-cutters. The electric, or compressed air jack-hammer is the main tool of the anthracite miner. In days gone by, our hearts used to go out in sincerest sympathy with the poor miner who shouldered pick and shovel, and, day after day, went down-deep down into the dark. damp, dismal depths, "of the coal mine underneath the ground," as the dirge has it, to delve for "dusky diamonds" to satisfy our needs. We pic- tured him, worming his way through small openings, in order to get to his working place, where, we supposed, he would often have to work, flat on his back, in oozy slime, picking down the coal he could not reach in any other position. As a matter of fact. no such miserable conditions are before the anthracite miner. At one time he worked hard for little pay, but he does so no longer. Thanks to modern tools and a militant protective labor union, his lot has improved. His work is still dangerous, but not hard. With his power- hammer, the anthracite miner bores his holes twenty times as fast as he once did by hand. He handles his explosives with care-if he is of the cautious type, which some miners are not-tamps the charge carefully in, fills the holes with clay, shoots down his coal and goes home, after from five to eight hours of work, leaving to his helper the heavy work of loading the loosened coal into mine cars.
Loading of coal, at the working face. is done entirely by hand, or by mine scrapers. Coal-loading machines are used in bituminous mines, but their introduction into anthracite operations is still a matter for future record- probably the near future. Possibly, the dearth of coal-loading machines in the hard coal regions is explained by the difficulty that prevails nowadays of mining clean coal, i. c., coal free from impurities such as bone or shale. A mechanical loader cannot discriminate: the human loader can. Indeed. he has too. Each mine car loaded bears the miner's number, and if more than seven per cent. of slate is found in a car, the miner is notified and his helper warned. Two or three such evidences of carelessness puts the miner's helper out of work. Strictly speaking, the miner is usually an independent worker- a contract miner, working on tonnage or yardage basis, and generally is able
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to make a comfortable living in less than an eight-hour day. His helper, how- ever, is on a day basis, his pay corresponding approximately to that of unskilled labor.
From the mine chamber, the mules haul the coal to the train-making points underground, and the electric motors transport it quickly over the main roads to the exit-the pit-shaft. In the same cages that the men use, the loaded mine cars are hoisted to the surface. There they are rolled off the mine-cage by hand to go on their way by gravity to the breaker building. a huge structure which generally towers above all other buildings at the mines. The cars are hoisted up to the breaker top, either by a vertical lift or an inclined plane. At the breaker hoist are boys whose work it is to sprag the mine cars as they come, and release them one by one to the hoist. In the breaker building the cars dump their flashing "black diamonds"-as well as their "bone" which dogs would not eat and their slate that would never make ideal roofing mate- rial-on to oscillating bars. The process of sizing the coal and of separating it from the impurities now begins. The coal descends from level to level in the breaker process, encountering on its way the mechanical slate pickers or other watchers whose duty it is to consign the worthless material to the waste pile, and let the coal go on its way with a clean bill of health. It has had rough treatment, for in the breaker the coal is "dropped, rolled, rubbed, crushed and shaken" until only that part of it which is smaller than three sixty-fourths of an inch has failed to find a commercial billet in a railway car. Nothing that is coal seems to be wasted. Even the small sizes and fine dust that are swept away from the jigs and tables, with the water used in cleaning, is not forever lost, it seems. Most of the natural watercourses of the coal regions go on their way dark with coal silt; but eighty-one dredges were in use in 1919, and they recovered 621,365 tons of coal.
If the breaker system shows a conservation method that is near perfection, the underground mining does not, although this is not the fault of the mine management, nor of the miners. The waste in mining is still approximately one-third of the original coal content (percentage in 1921 was 34.6), but this was mainly due to the difficulties of mining in the pitch depth and faults of coal bed. Anthracite mining is much more difficult now than it was. This is indicated by the declining output per man per day. In 1877 the production per man per day was 7.5 gross tons ; in 1922 it was 4 tons. The average thick- ness of the coal bed in 1872 was 158 inches ; in 1922 it was 80 inches. The thick seams of early years have been worked almost to death, and year by year the operators have to give attention to thinner and thinner beds. For use in the latter, some of the companies have adopted successfully the shaking chute, to avoid having to take down the roof over the mine tracks. In this way the cost of mining has been lessened and the companies enabled to work seams that a few years ago could not be mined. Some of the seams now worked by long-wall or semi-wall methods of European coalfields are barely two feet thick. Therefore, a waste of only one-third of the coal in the ground is in fact a mining triumph, if compared with the wasteful mining of early days. In 1880, an engineer of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company thought that the waste of only 61.3 of the original coal content was a mining achievement worthy of notice by mining engineers. In the pioneer decades of anthracite mining, the waste in mining was, it is said, 75 to 80 per cent. of the coal worked. Therefore, present-day waste in mining would not cause such pondering in company circles as it does, were it not for the acknow- ledged fact that the anthracite industry is going down hill, more than one-half of the coal deposits yet found in the anthracite region having been exhausted. There is need of conservation. Mining is going farther and farther from the surface. One hundred and twenty years of delving has burrowed ways under- ground long enough, if placed end to end, to about circle the earth. One of
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the twenty-five State mine inspectors of the anthracite field, in 1922, estimated that in his inspection district there were 1,500 miles of underground gangways and workings. The miner has gone far underground to get the heating com- modity that American householders demand. He will go farther and deeper during the next century of delving. Then perhaps he will have robbed Mother . Earth of the whole of the wonderful mineral deposit she placed in Pennsyl- vania's beautiful valleys aeons of time ago for use in this tireless industrial age. In 1872 the average depth at which anthracite mining was done was 235 feet below the surface ; in 1922, the average depth was 415 feet. Maybe, as times goes on and the search for other coal measures becomes more intense. more will be found at deeper levels. Indeed, in 1926, in one part of the Lacka- wanna Valley, deeper sinking discovered a seam which will give a new and indefinite lease of life to a mining town that otherwise was expected to develop all the earmarks of the Deserted Village thirty years or so hence. Possibly, this experience will be repeated in other parts of the anthracite coalfields, but the estimate of the United States Coal Commission of 1923 was that, at pres- ent rate of production, Pennsylvania would come to the end of its anthracite coal resources in about one hundred years.
Production has declined more than one-fourth from the peak level of war years. Of course, that was an extraordinary effort, not normal production. Still, the suspicion has gained ground that the anthracite operators have, of late, been restricting output to maintain price level. Certainly, movements of anthracite coal have been somewhat sluggish since the last two great strikes, 1922 and 1925, forced consumers to use substitute fuels. Oil-burning furnaces have made more devastating raids upon anthracite markets than the coal operators seem to realize. To the average uninformed citizen-the "poor consumer"-it seems that the anthracite producer, conscious of the superiority of his fuel for home consumption, sees nothing ominous in the present sluggish- ness of demand. They imagine, he reasons, that when consumers seek the best fuel, they will call for anthracite; that no strenuous hunt for buyers is necessary ; that they will come of their own accord-when they want the best. Meanwhile, business logic seems to tell the operators to "sit tight," to "hold their end up"-in other words, to maintain sale prices at a level which will give the producer a reasonable return on his investment, and put into the pay envelope of the miner the war level wage that his powerful union has forced his employer to promise him for the next four years.
As a matter of fact, the operators are looking just as apprehensively at the existing state of things as the miners, who of late have been working only part time, or as the tradespeople of the mining region, whose trade depends almost wholly upon the mining pay roll which eventually finds its way, almost wholly, into their tills. The resources of the mining companies were severely tested by the last two general labor strikes, or lockouts. The miners have lived through two suspensions of about five months each-1922 and 1925- and when peace came, with surety of a truce of five years, they were looking to that period with confidence, hoping in that time to again reestablish their depleted savings accounts. The tradespeople were looking with equal confi- dence to the miners-an honest, responsible class as a whole-to make good their advances ; but latterly, the men have been earning barely enough to pay their way.
How seriously a suspension of mining affects the tradespeople of the anthracite region may be understood roughly by a statement recently made. Every day of idleness at the mines makes the region a million dollars poorer -a region of only 1,300,000 people. A special effort to keep the mines work- ing steadily seems called for.
Of course, the sympathy of the common people-the average consumer- is instinctively against the big interests. Great industrial combinations are
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always viewed with suspicion. The political spell-binder since the beginning has ever condemned the few who have brought order out of industrial chaos, who have swept away the hundreds of petty dabblers at industry and in their places put a few strong corporations able, by better working methods and abler executive control, to stabilize prices, give the worker a fair return for his labor, and also prevent the squandering of a valuable mineral resource of the Nation. In the report of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, is a paragraph which reads :
In the study of anthracite conditions, one can not but be struck by the thought that a commodity so valuable and indispensable, lying within a small area, limited in quantity, should not be wastefully mined, and that the needs of future generations should be considered and their interests conserved.
There was a time, near the end of the nineteenth century, when there was a scramble for anthracite coal lands, over-production resulting. In conse- quence another scramble developed for what markets there were. Selling at less than the cost of production, some of the weaker producers were driven to the wall, putting many mine workers out of work. The industry was stabi- lized by the "big interests," the Coal Commission of 1902 having to recognize in its report that "the gradual concentration of anthracite mining properties in the hands of fewer corporations, . ... contributed to secure more uniform conditions in mining." The distributed state of almost all industries during the World War provided many opportunities for profiteering: and the anthracite coal industry has many black marks against it on consumers books. Yet, strange to say, the "big interests" that control eighty or ninety per cent. of the production were not the offenders. The United States Coal Commission, authorized by Congress in 1922, to investigate all phases of the coal industry, found that although the uniformity of price asked by the big companies, year after year, indicated some degree of price fixing, this com- bination was not harmful to the consumer, for the big producers maintained this price level even in the face of opportunities to sell at very much higher price. The serious instances of profiteering were found to have been commit- ted by a few of the smaller "independent" producers who hang on the fringe of what the Coal Commission described as "a natural monopoly." The smaller "independents" are not bound by what the big companies deem to be best for all concerned-for producers, miners, and consumers. They have been known to take advantage of a shortage of supply. to extort an extra dollar or two. This led to further profiteering. for retailers had opportunity of extorting more, not only for what little coal the "independents" had, but also the larger quantities they had obtained at "reasonable" price from the "companies"- the "big interests." Thus, a discreditable opportunism was charged to the industry as a whole, instead of to only a small, irresponsible fraction of it.
It can hardly be denied that the anthracite coal industry, as at present conducted, is a monopoly, or at least a community of interests in which the average American consumer does not share. It is a seven-member combina- tion : I. The Commonwealth, the original owners of this natural monopoly. 2. County. 3. Municipality, these three drawing what might be classed as unearned increments to the extent of $25,000,000 in taxes in 1926. 4. The landowners, who draw unearned increment also-royalty on their coal lands that the capitalists operate. 5. The "big interests," who have invested hun- dreds of millions of dollars in mining plants, mined the coal and sold it at prices which have yielded them an average profit of forty-one cents a ton over ten years (1913-22, as ascertained by the U. S. Coal Commission). 6. The 150,000 mine workers, who, when work is steady, are able to live comfortably, under good social conditions, on their pay. 7. The million or so more people of the coal regions whose living depends upon the trade that the anthracite
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industry brings into the region. At times it is hard to say which is the dom- inating member-the capitalist or the laborer. The Coal Commission report reads, as to the labor unions: "There is a unified control of mine labor, the entire region being, for practical purposes 100 per cent. organized for collective bargaining. For better or for worse, the fact to be faced today is that wages, hours, and working conditions must be satisfactory to the workers." On the other hand, the capitalist is the man who holds the key to the mine. If he cannot sell his coal at a profit, he can lock the mine; then all the other mem- bers of the monopoly lose 100 per cent. of their revenue. In view of the exist- ing irregularity of work at the mines, and the keen competition which other fuels are bringing into anthracite markets, an uneasy feeling is creeping over many logical business men of the anthracite region. They are not so sure that the "goose that lays the golden eggs," in bright and shiny anthracite, will ever again have strength enough to produce at the old rate. So many of its pin feathers have been plucked recently that the bird cannot be expected to con- tinue strong and productive. A drop from 99,000,000 tons to 72,000,000 tons in nine years of a period of constant increase of population-and consequently of fuel consumers-needs more than war-time abnormality to explain it. The average American will buy what he wants, if it conforms in price to his idea of comparative value. If it does not, he will get along with the other article. Anthracite is the best, but not the only fuel. Anthracite may be the hard coal monopoly, but there is soft coal and oil.
From the beginning, the "big interests" of the anthracite coal industry have been unfortunate. They seemed unable to avoid countering the basic State and National laws which very definitely laid down the corporate bounds of common carriers. The alliance of transportation and mining corporations was attacked by law-makers more than a hundred years ago; yet in the develop- ment of the anthracite coalfields such an alliance was logical, and indeed inevitable. The coal deposits were worthless without good means of transpor- tation. Common carriers, to exist, must have something to carry. The one need dove-tailed into the other. It cost some Wilkes-Barre men, in 1814, $1 a ton to mine Lehigh coal and $31 a ton to transport it to Philadelphia. The Lehigh Navigation Company was organized in 1818, with power to clear the slack-water navigation on the Lehigh River, and to dig a canal from White- haven to Easton. The prime purpose of this waterway improvement was to enable the Lehigh Coal Mine Company to deliver its coal in Philadelphia at a lower price than Welsh coal. In 1822, the two companies, having allied inter- ests combined, the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company being then char- tered. It went forward in its dual capacity, notwithstanding legislative attempts to curb it. It promoted the building of the first blast-furnace at Catasauqua, in 1841, after tests had shown that anthracite coal could be suc- cessfully used in the making of pig iron. The iron deposits, probably, of the Scranton district, influenced the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company to become railway builders also. The company built the Lehigh and Susque- hanna Railroad, from Phillipsburg to Scranton, leasing it subsequently to the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, for a share of the gross receipts of the latter. It is thus seen that the pioneer coal company of the Lehigh coal- field could not, in developing its coal property, avoid being drawn into trans- portation enterprises also. The history of some of the other now great eastern railroads shows somewhat similar association with early mining enterprises.
Throughout the history of anthracite mining-at least since the beginning of canalization of waterways and the building of railways-almost each decade has shown a decrease in the percentage of coal mined by the independent producers, i. e., by those operators who were not recognized as closely affili- ated with some railway company. In 1895, the "independents" produced forty-five per cent. of the tonnage mined; in 1900, thirty-eight per cent .; in
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1905, twenty-five per cent; in 1921 (after the dissolution of the Temple Iron Company), twenty-four per cent. If, however, the Susquehanna Collieries Company be included in the railroad group of mining companies, the percent- age of "independents" for the year 1921 would be nineteen only.
The railroad group of operators is now generally referred to as the "com- panies" and this sufficiently differentiates them from the "independents." In 1900, the anthracite coal carrying railroads and their affiliated coal companies were :
RAILROAD.
MINING COMPANY.
Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R. R.
Coal Dept. of D. L. & W. R. R.
Delaware & Hudson Canal Co.
. Coal Dept. of D. & H. Canal Co.
Erie & Wyoming Valley R. R. Pennsylvania Coal Company.
(Absorbed by Erie interests.)
Erie R. R .. Hillside Coal & Iron Co. New York, Susquehanna & Western. Absorbed by Erie R. R.
New York, Ontario & Western R. R.
Scranton Coal Co., and New York & Scranton Coal Co.
Pennsylvania Railroad Coal Companies of the Pennsylvania Railroad. . Lehigh Valley Coal Co.
Lehigh Valley Railroad
Delaware, Susquehanna & Schuylkill.
.Cross Creek Coal Company.
Central Railroad of New Jersey.
Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co.
Philadelphia & Reading. R. R. Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Com- pany.
In 1921-22 there was some change in name, but to all intents the same car- rier groups were connected with the same mining operations. As shown in the reports of the U. S. Coal Commission, there were ten so-called railroad coal companies, or eight mining "interests," in 1922. They were :
RAILROAD.
MINING INTEREST.
Philadelphia & Reading R. R.
Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co.
Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R. R. . Glen Alden Coal Co.
Delaware & Hudson Co. Hudson Coal Co.
Lehigh Valley R. R.
Lehigh Valley Coal Co.
Coxe Bros. & Co., Inc.
Erie Railroad Co.
Pennsylvania Coal Co.
Hillside Coal & Iron Co.
Central Railroad of N. J.
Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co.
Lehigh & New England R. R. .
Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co.
New York, Ontario & Western R. R.
Scranton Coal Co.
Although it cannot be said that pioneer anthracite coal producers were the pioneers also of all of these railways, it might, with good reason be claimed that the anthracite coal industry had appreciable part in the origin and sound establishment of most of them. For instance, the Delaware and Hudson, which is likely to be the leading link in a Loree chain of railways that would reach far into the continent, had its beginning in one of the oldest of the anthracite mining corporations. The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company was mining coal at Carbondale, the northern end of the Wyoming coalfield, in 1829. The first steam locomotive used in America was imported from Eng- land by this pioneer coal mining and transportation company. Coal was, it would seem, the spur that drove the pioneers on to this dangerous experiment in mechanical haulage. Rivalry spurred on others vitally interested in coal to bring the new means of transportation to their mines also. So it happened that during the next few decades the ancient saving "All roads lead to Rome" might well be applied to Pennsylvania's region of catacombs. The iron roads of the East were making pilgrimages to King Coal, all anxious to carry back to his shivering subjects outside his warmest blessings. Still, the American pioneer of steam locomotion-the D. & H. Co .- hardly seems to have been as faithful to that means of coal haulage as some of the later carrier companies were. The Delaware and Hudson Company had built a gravity road connect- ing its Carbondale mines with its canal system, six miles or so distant. at
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Honesdale. Along the canal for very many years the coal would slowly go to its terminus at Rondout, on the Hudson River, thence making quicker way down the historical natural waterway to New York City. Not until 1898 did the Delaware and Hudson Company abandon the gravity-road-and-canal route to market. In that year they built a railway spur, of standard gauge, to con- nect their Carbondale mines with the Erie Railroad at Honesdale. Much of the D. & H. output, however, was going northward, over the Jefferson branch of the Erie Railroad, from Carbondale to Nineveh, there connecting with the Delaware and Hudson main road to Albany. This Erie branch is now part of that known as the Susquehanna branch of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad system. The Delaware and Hudson Railroad Company owns and operates several of the largest mines in the Lackawanna and Wyoming valleys. Its coal properties extend from Carbondale to Plymouth, and its Susquehanna branch of railway extends from Nineveh to Wilkes-Barre, serving these mines. Its allocation of work involved in its mining enterprises is somewhat unusual. The Hudson Coal Company is closely affiliated with the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Company. Indeed, the coal company is absolutely owned by the railroad company. The latter not only owns all the mines but works them, delivering the coal at the mine mouth to the Hudson Coal Company, whose part in the operation is to prepare the coal for market and sell it, through whole- salers. From the Hudson Coal Company's breakers, the coal passes into the railway cars of the parent company, the latter, of course, reserving to itself the important prerogatives of carrying agent.
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