MINING COAL FOR THE GOVERNMENT'S NEEDS WITH ELECTRICALLY OPERATED MACHINES.
6-TON ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE PULLING A STRING OF COAL CARS.
PICKING TABLES AND LOADING BOOMS IN A WEST VIRGINIA COAL MINE.
TWENTY-TON ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE BRINGING COAL OUT OF MINE.
America began keeping the records of coal mining in the year 1807. Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated President of the United States in 1913. In the 106 years between 1807 and 1913, and including those years, American mines produced a total of 9,844,159,937 tons of coal. In the succeeding five years of President Wilson's administration American mines turned out 2,960,938,597 tons of coal, almost one-third as much as was mined in the entire 1807-1913 period, and almost one-fourth of all the coal mined in the United States since records have been kept.
The American coal miners in 1918 met the war emergency by producing 150,000,000 tons of coal more than they had dug in 1914. The shortage of coal in the winter of 1917-18 was due not to the inability of the mines to produce the required tonnage but to inadequate railroad transportation facilities and severe weather conditions.