HISTORY OF COAL MINING
Coal has been used worldwide as a fuel for centuries. Because it is found almost exclusively underground, it must be mined or extracted prior to use. Large-scale coal mining developed during the Industrial Revolution, and coal provided the main source of primary energy for industry and transportation in the West from the 18th century to the 1950s. Coal remains an important energy source, due to its low cost and abundance when compared to other fuels, particularly for electricity generation.
Since 1890, coal mining has also been a political and social issue. Coal miners' labour unions became powerful in many countries in the 20th century, and often the miners were leaders of the left or Socialist movements (as in Britain, Germany, Poland, Japan, Canada and the U.S.) Since 1970, environmental issues have been increasingly important, including the health of miners, destruction of the landscape from strip mines and mountaintop removal, air pollution, and coal combustion's contribution to global warming.
Early history
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze Age, 2000-1000 BC. The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). They are credited with organizing production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this activity could be called an industry. China remained the world's largest producer and consumer of coal until the 18th century. Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in Britannia.
Coal miners in Hazleton PA, USA, 1900The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs. They used coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well. Coal deposits were discovered by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century.
Early coal extraction was small-scale, the coal lying either on the surface, or very close to it. Typical methods for extraction included drift mining and bell pits. In Britain, some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest of Dean) date from the medieval period.
As well as drift mines, small scale shaft mining was used. This took the form of a bell pit, the extraction working outward from a central shaft, or a technique called room and pillar in which 'rooms' of coal were extracted with pillars left to support the roofs. Both of these techniques however left considerable amount of usable coal behind.
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the 1700s, and later spread to Europe, North America, and Japan, was based on the availability of coal to power steam engines. International trade expanded exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and steamships in the 1810-1840 era. Coal was cheaper and much more efficient than wood in most steam engines. As central and northern England contains an abundance of coal, many mines were situated in these areas. The small-scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand, with extraction moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial Revolution progressed.
Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World, around 1905 Country Year Short Tons Europe United Kingdom 1905 236,128,936 Germany (coal) 121,298,167 Germany (lignite) 52,498,507 France 35,869,497 Belgium 21,775,280 Austria (coal) 12,585,263 Austria (lignite) 22,692,076 Hungary (coal) 1904 1,031,501 Hungary (lignite) 5,447,283 Spain 1905 3,202,911 Russia 1904 19,318,000 Holland 466,997 Bosnia (lignite) 540,237 Romania 110,000 Serbia 1904 183,204 Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412,916 Sweden 322,384 Greece (lignite) 1904 466,997 Asia India 1905 8,417,739 Japan 1903 10,088,845 Sumatra 1904 207,280 Africa Transvaal 1904 2,409,033 Natal 1905 1,129,407 Cape Colony 1904 154,272 America United States 1905 350,821,000 Canada 1904 7,509,860 Mexico 700,000 Peru 1905 72,665 Australasia New South Wales 1905 6,632,138 Queensland 529,326 Victoria 153,135 Western Australia 127,364 Tasmania 51,993 New Zealand 1,585,756 Men leaving a UK colliery at the close of a shift
Pre-World War II mechanization
Since its introduction, coal mining has played an intricate role in the economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic stability of the United States. This changed with the mechanization of the industry beginning in the early 1900s. Within the first forty years of the twentieth century, there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power. This statistic clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining, over time, less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry.
As this trend continued, the economic backbone of the coal-based economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet. As the miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands, resistance to mechanization grew. As noted in historian Keith Dix’s article, “What’s a Coal Miner to Do?” one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginia’s Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards. Dix also goes on to say that “The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles.” 1
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers. For example, by 1940, almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West Virginia, one of the largest coal producing states at the time, was being loaded by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard times for the former miners and their families. With no place to turn for a steady income, and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive scrip-based system put in place by mining companies, miners were forced to move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able to earn a living that could support their wives and children. A large number of miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus, Ohio. Others chose to move even further, to places such as the south-eastern U.S. where jobs could be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida . While economic prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic depression and presumably into the expanding middle class, the initial pre-World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever.
History of coal mining around the world
Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century, although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th Century. The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of Lancashire, of Yorkshire, and of South Wales; the Yorkshire pits which supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep. Northumberland and Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first deep pits. In much of Britain coal was worked from drifts, or scraped off when it outcropped. Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and primitive equipment. Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as support pillars. As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1,000 ft. deep) only about 40 percent. of the coal could be extracted. The use of wood props to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800. The critical factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases. At first fires were burned to create air currents.
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to meet the rapidly rising demand. About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in was some 6¼ million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the twentieth century). After 1790 output soared, reaching 16 million tons by 1815. The miners, less menaced by imported labour or machines than were the cotton operatives, had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees.
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947, although coal had been a political issue since the early part of the century. The need to maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world wars.
As well as energy supply, coal in the UK became a political issue, due to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by colliery owners. The main labour union was the National Union of Mineworkers, founded in 1888, which claimed 600,000 members in 1908.
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had over working conditions. Much of the 'old left' of British politics can trace its origins to coal-mining areas.
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of collieries they worked. In the late 20th century, improved integration of coal extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies such as oil, natural gas and, from the late 1950s, nuclear power used for electricity. More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy sources and bio-fuels.
Post World War II, the coal industry in Britain was Nationalised, and remained in public ownership until the 1980s.
The 1980s and 1990s saw much much change in the UK coal industry, with the industry contracting, in some areas quite drastically. Many pits were 'uneconomic' to work at current wage rates compared to 'cheap' North Sea oil and gas, and in comparison to subsidy levels in Europe. The Miners' Strike of 1984 failed to stop the government's plans to shrink the industry . The National Coal Board (by then British Coal), was privatised by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns through the mid 1990s, and the mining industry disappeared almost completely.
USA
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 Anthracite (or "hard" coal), clean and smokeless, became the preferred fuel in cities, replacing wood by about 1850. Anthracite from the Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) 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 Eastern cities, and a few major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields. By 1840, hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark, and then quadrupled by 1850.
Bituminous (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 engines, and was used to make coke for steel 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, Indiana and Illinois, as well as West Virginia, Kentucky and Alabama. The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the demand to 360 million short tons in 1932.
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois in 1898, the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successful in its strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900. However, the union's strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national political crisis in 1902. President Theodore Roosevelt 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, one of which resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. Neutralized by the dispatch of federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre, the UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a decade. Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about 1920, when it collapsed after a national strike.
In 1927, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide strike in Colorado's coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre. Immediately after that massacre, Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. In announcing this policy, the company avoided recognizing the radical IWW. Thus, the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract in Colorado.
Under the leadership of John L. Lewis 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 engines were phased out in railways and factories, and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of electricity. Employment in bituminous peaked at 705,000 men in 1923, falling to 140,000 by 1970 and 70,000 in 2003. Environmental restrictions on high-sulfur coal, and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially the Powder River fields in Wyoming and adjacent states), caused the sharp decline in underground mining after 1970. UMW membership among active miners fell from 160,000 in 1980 to only 16,000 in 2005, as non-union miners predominated. The American share of world coal production remained steady at about 20% from 1980 to 2005.
Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. At its peak in 1949 25,000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal from mines. The miners, who lived in company towns, were politically active in left-wing politics. Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26 miners. All the mines were closed by 2001. The United States always supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario. By 2000 about 19% of Canada's energy was supplied by coal, chiefly imported from the U.S.
Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s, In 1782 the Krupp family began operations near Essen. After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr Area, which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone (Zollverein]] to open new mines and associated iron smelters. New railroads were built by British engineers around 1850. Numerous small industrial centers sprang up, focused on ironworks, using local coal. The iron and steel works typically bought mines, and erected coking ovens to supply their own requirements in coke and gas. These integrated coal-iron firms ("Huettenzechen") became numerous after 1854; after 1900 they became mixed firms called "Konzern."
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8,500 short tons; its employment about 64. By 1900, the average mine's output had risen to 280,000 and the employment to about 1,400. Total Ruhr coal output rose from 2.0 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880, 60 in 1900, and 114 in 1913, on the verge of war. In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons, growing to 130 in 1940. Output peaked in 1957 (at 123), declining to 78 million short tons in 1974.
Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal industry had long been established, and used steam-engines for pumping. The Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse, so coal was shipped downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta. The opening of the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris. The Belgian coalfield outcrops over most of its area, and the highly folded nature of the seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant. Deep mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small operations. There was a complex legal system for concessions, often multiple layers had different owners. Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper (thanks to the good pumping system). In 1790, the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters. By 1856, the average depth in the area west of Mons was 361, and in 1866, 437 meters and some pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters; one was 1,065 meters deep, probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time. Gas explosions were a serious problem, and Belgium had high fatality rates. By the late 19th century the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing some coal from the Ruhr.
Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous, because of explosions, cave-ins, and the difficulty of rescue. The worst single disaster in British coal mining history was at Senghenydd in South Wales. On the morning of 14 October 1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys. Only 72 bodies were recovered. The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah, West Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American History. The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called "black damp"), which ignited the coal dust. In all, the lives of 362 men were lost in the underground explosion.
