History of coal mining
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Early Coal Mining
Coal has been used for centuries. Roman historians describe coal as a heating source of last resort in Britannia.
There is undocumented specualtion that coal was first used by the Chinese as early as 50 BC. Oddly shaped tools have been discovered in what seem like primitive mines in many parts of China.
However, the earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs. They used coal not only for fire, but as ornaments as well. Coal was 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 the UK, some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest of Dean) date from the medival 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.
These early 'mines' were not worked by many people (typically 2-3), but with the industrial revolution the numbers employed increased.
Coal mining during the
With the Industrial Revolution, steam engines came into increasing use, and coal became the preferred fuel for these 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.
As early as the 1750s, men, women, and even children as young as five worked in these mines. Conditions were often brutish and many perished or were injured in the early stages of the industrial revolution without compensation. 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.
Post WW-II (Europe)
Post WW-II much of Europe's coal mines passed into effective government control, with the British
coal mines being nationalised under the control of the National Coal Board in 1947.
In Eastern Europe, government control of Coal was an outcome of communist occupation.
Co-operation on coal trading was also responsible for the 'European Coal and Steel Community' treaties. These are seen by some as a direct catalyst for the EEC and European Single Market
Coal in American History
see also Coal Strike of 1902
Coal in 2006
Today coal is used for various industries. Over 50% of electricity in the United States is generated by coal. Coal is also the most common source material for creating coke, a clean-burning high-energy fuel used for smelting iron ore and other purposes. Another common use of coal is manufacturing Portland cement. Coal is still used for household heating, but this use is much less widespread than it once was. Anthracite which is found in northern West Virginia and the Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region is typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal that has very few impurities. The energy policy of the United Kingdom acknowledges expanded use of coal conflicts with its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and yet admits that, with natural gas and oil reserves diminishing in the North Sea fields, conversion of coal to oil or simple combustion of coal may see expansion in the future.References
Britain
- Carolyn Baylies; The History of the Yorkshire Miners, 1881-1918 Routledge, 1993
- John Benson; British Coal-Miners in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History Holmes & Meier, 1980
- Robert W Dron. The economics of coal mining (1928)
- B. Fine. The Coal Question: Political Economy and Industrial Change from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day (1990)
- Michael W. Flinn, and David Stoker. History of the British Coal Industry : Volume 2. 1700-1830: The Industrial Revolution (1984)
- Robert Lindsay Galloway. A history of coal mining in Great Britain
- Hatcher, John. The History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 1: Before 1700: Towards the Age of Coal (1993)
- Margot Heinemann. Britain's coal: A study of the mining crisis (1944)
- Edward Hull. The Coal-fields of Great Britain: Their History, Structure and Resources: With Descriptions 1905
- James Alan Jaffe. The Struggle for Market Power: Industrial Relations in the British Coal Industry, 1800-1840 (2003)
- W. Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines (1906).
United States
- [Sean Patrick Adams, . "The US Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century."] EH.Net Encyclopedia, August 15 2001 scholarly overview
- Sean Patrick Adams, Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
- Harold W Aurand. Coalcracker Culture: Work and Values in Pennsylvania Anthracite, 1835-1935 2003
- Morton S. Baratz, The Union and the Coal Industry (Yale University Press, 1955)
- Frederick Moore Binder, Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and Its Utilization to 1860. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974.
- Perry Blatz, Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875-1925. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994.
- David Alan Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922 (1981)
- Phil Conley, History of West Virginia Coal Industry (Charleston: Education Foundation, 1960)
- Keith Dix, What's a Coal Miner to Do? The Mechanization of Coal Mining (1988), changes in the coal industry prior to 1940
- Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (1977), leader of Mine Workers union, 1920-1960
- Alfred Chandler, . "Anthracite Coal and the Beginnings of the ‘Industrial Revolution' in the United States," Business History Review 46 (1972): 141-181.
- Carmen., DiCiccio, Coal and Coke in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1996
- Howard Eavenson, . The First Century and a Quarter of the American Coal Industry 1942.
- Ronald D, Eller. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930 1982.
- [Price V. Fishback. Soft Coal, Hard Choices: The Economic Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890-1930 (1992)]
- [Verla R. Flores and A. Dudley Gardner. Forgotten Frontier: A History of Wyoming Coal Mining (1989)]
- [Jonathan Grossman "The Coal Strike of 1902 – Turning Point in U.S. Policy" Monthly Labor Review October 1975. online]
- Katherine Harvey, The Best Dressed Miners: Life and Labor in the Maryland Coal Region, 1835-1910. Cornell University Press, 1993.
- Herman R. Lantz; People of Coal Town Columbia University Press, 1958; on southern Illinois
- John H.M. Laslett, ed. The United Mine Workers: A Model of Industrial Solidarity? Penn State University Press, 1996.
- Ronald L. Lewis. Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict. University Press of Kentucky, 1987.
- Priscilla Long, Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry Paragon, 1989.
- Richard D. Lunt, Law and Order vs. the Miners: West Virginia, 1907-1933 Archon Books, 1979, On labor conflicts of the early twentieth century.
- [Edward A. Lynch and David J. McDonald. Coal and Unionism: A History of the American Coal Miners' Unions (1939)]
- [Robert H. Nelson. The Making of Federal Coal Policy (1983)]
- Glen Lawhon Parker, The Coal Industry: A Study in Social Control (Washington: American Council on Public Affairs, 1940)
- Phelan, Craig. Divided Loyalties: The Public and Private Life of Labor Leader John Mitchell (1994)
- H. Benjamin Powell, Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis. Jacob Cist and the Developing Market for Pennsylvania Anthracite. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978.
- [Dan Rottenberg, In the Kingdom of Coal: An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2003)], owners' perspective
- Sam H. Schurr, and Bruce C. Netschert. Energy in the American Economy, 1850-1975: An Economic Study of Its History and Prospects. Johns Hopkins Press, 1960.
- Curtis Seltzer, Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American Coal Industry University Press of Kentucky, 1985, conflict in the coal industry to the 1980s.
- Joe William Trotter Jr., Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32 (1990)
- U.S. Immigration Commission, Report on Immigrants in Industries, Part I: Bituminous Coal Mining, 2 vols. Senate Document no. 633, 61st Cong., 2nd sess. (1911)
- Anthony F.C. Wallace, St. Clair. A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry. Knopf, 1981.
- Robert D. Ward and William W. Rogers, Labor Revolt in Alabama: The Great Strike of 1894 (University of Alabama Press, 1965).
- Kenneth Warren, Triumphant Capitalism: Henry Clay Frick and the Industrial Transformation of America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.
- John Alexander Williams. West Virginia and the Captains of Industry 1976.
- [John Alexander Williams. Appalachia: A History (2002)]
World
- Dorian, James P. Minerals, Energy, and Economic Development in China Clarendon Press, 1994
- Barbara Freese. Coal: A Human History (2003)
- Jeffrey, E. C. Coal and Civilization 1925.
- Nimura Kazuo, Andrew Gordon, and Terry Boardman; The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan Duke University Press, 1997
- Norman J. G. Pounds and William N. Parker; Coal and Steel in Western Europe; the Influence of Resources and Techniques on Production Indiana University Press, 1957
- Elspeth Thomson; The Chinese Coal Industry: An Economic History Routledge 2003.
External links
- [Mining History Network] numerous links (many are broken)
- [Coal mining in Wales]
- [Dueling Mythologies], by Gilbert Wesley Purdy. A book review/essay that contains considerable information on coal mining in the early 20th century.
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