Coal and the coal mines

by Homer Greene

This was indeed a discouraging beginning for the Schuylkill coal trade. Fortunately, however, not all of the colonel’s customers at Philadelphia had met with failure in the effort to burn his coal. Messrs. Mellen & Bishop, a firm of iron factors in Delaware County, at the earnest solicitation of Colonel Shoemaker, made the experiment with the small quantity of coals purchased by them, and finding that the fuel burned successfully they announced that fact through the Philadelphia newspapers. Other iron workers were thus induced to try the coal, and finally all the furnaces along the Schuylkill had open doors for it. Eventually it came into use for the purpose of generating steam, the experiments of John Price Wetherill in that direction having been only partially satisfactory, but those at the Phœnixville iron works in 1825 meeting with complete success.

Still the prices which coal commanded in the Philadelphia market were not sufficient to pay for the labor of mining it and the cost of shipping it. So that, prior to 1818, nearly all the coal mined in the Schuylkill region was sold to the blacksmiths of the surrounding country. In that year, however, the improvements of the Schuylkill navigation were completed, and afforded an additional, though not by any means safe or sufficient, outlet for the products of the mines. By 1826 and 1827 the growing importance of the coal trade became manifest, the Schuylkill navigation system was placed in excellent repair, and the mining business of the district grew rapidly to enormous proportions.

The northeasterly extension of the Wyoming coal basin, leaving the Susquehanna River at Pittston, follows the valley of the Lackawanna up to a point seven miles beyond Carbondale, where it cuts slightly into the counties of Wayne and Susquehanna, and there runs out. This extension is known as the Lackawanna region. Coal was dug up and experimented with here at the beginning of the present century. Its outcrop at the river bank was noted by Preston, a surveyor, in 1804. In 1812 it was mined at Providence and burned in a rude grate by H. C. L. Von Storch. About this time the brothers William and Maurice Wurts, having been attracted by the mineral wealth of the region, came there from Philadelphia and began explorations for the purpose of ascertaining the location, area, and quality of the beds of anthracite coal. William, the younger brother, in the course of his wanderings through the rugged hills and thick forests of the country, chanced to meet a hunter by the name of David Nobles, who, having fled from the adjoining county of Wayne to avoid imprisonment for debt, was leading a precarious existence in the woods. Nobles was well acquainted with the country, knew where the outcroppings of coal were, and having entered into the service of Wurts, rendered him most valuable assistance.

Their investigations having proved the presence of large bodies of coal, the Wurts brothers next procured title to the lands containing it, and then turned their attention to the problem of finding an outlet to market. They decided finally to ship coal on rafts by the Wallenpaupack Creek to the Lackawaxen, by the Lackawaxen to the Delaware, and thence to Philadelphia. This method was experimented on from 1814 to 1822 with varying degrees of disaster. In the year last mentioned they succeeded in taking to Philadelphia 100 tons of coal, only to find the market flooded with 2,240 tons of Lehigh coal. Competition was apparently hopeless; but instead of abandoning the enterprise, as men of less energy and perseverance would now have done, Maurice Wurts turned his attention to a new project. This was nothing less than to make an outlet to the New York market by building a canal which should reach from the Hudson River at Rondout, across to the Delaware at Port Jervis, and thence up that stream and the Lackawaxen to the nearest practicable point east of the coal beds. But when that point should be reached there would still be the Moosic Mountain, with its towering heights and precipitous bluffs, lying between the boats and the mines. The Wurts brothers did not acknowledge this to be a serious obstacle. They proposed to overcome this difficulty by building across the mountains a railroad, which should consist largely of inclined planes, the cars to be drawn up and let down these planes by means of stationary steam-engines, and to move along the stretches between the planes by force of gravity. Having formed their plans they set to work to carry them out. They procured the necessary legislation from the States of New York and Pennsylvania, they secured a charter in 1823–25 for a corporation known as the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, and by dint of supreme personal effort they succeeded in obtaining capital enough to begin and carry on the work. In 1828 the canal was completed to its terminus at Honesdale, the gravity railroad having been already constructed from the coal fields to that point, and in 1829 the company began to ship coal to tide-water on the Hudson. It was a bold and ingenious scheme, and for those days it was an enterprise of immense proportions. That these two men conceived it and earned it out in the face of great difficulties and against overwhelming odds entitles them to a place in those higher orders of genius that are touched with the light of the heroic. The Lackawanna region has been pierced by many other lines of railway, and to-day by these great highways a vast amount of Lackawanna coal is sent to the eastern cities and the seaboard.

But as a rule, men who invested their money in coal lands in the early days after the discovery of coal lost the amount of the investment. They, with prophetic vision, saw the comfort, the commerce, the manufactures, of a nation dependent on the products of the coal mines, but the people at large could not see so far. These pioneers made ready to supply an anticipated demand, but it did not come. Talking did not bring it. Exhibitions of the wonderful utility of the black coals served to arouse but a passing interest. No other product of the globe which has obtained a position of equal importance ever had to fight its way into public favor with such persistent effort through so many years. But when at last its worth became generally recognized, when the people had reached the conclusion that they wanted it, and its value in dollars had become fixed and permanent, then the pioneers of the industry had vanished from the field; they were disheartened, destitute, or dead; new hands and brains took up the work, matured the plans of the elders, and reaped the fortunes of which former generations had sown the seed.

In the beginning the coal lands were mostly divided into small tracts, and held by persons many of whom thought to open mines on their property and carry on the business of mining as an individual enterprise. This plan of work was partially successful so long as coal could be dug from the outcrop and carted away like stones from a quarry; but when it became necessary, as it soon did, to penetrate more deeply into the earth for the article of trade, then the cost of shafting, tunneling, and mining in general usually exceeded the resources of the individual operator, and either he succumbed to financial distress, or disposed of his mining interests to men or firms with more money. As the art of mining advanced with its necessities, it was learned, sometimes after bitter experience, that the business was profitable only when a large amount of capital was behind it. Therefore men who had invested a few thousand dollars transferred their interests to men who had a few hundred thousand to invest, and these, in turn, associating other capitalists with them, doubled or trebled the investment or ran it into the millions, forming companies or corporations to accomplish with their more perfect organization that which would be impossible to the individual. So it has come about that in these later days the individual operators have given place largely to the corporations; those who still remain in the field often operating their mines on a small capital at great disadvantage. In the bituminous regions, however, this rule does not hold good. There the coal lies near the surface, is accessible, and easily mined. It needs only to be carried to the river bank and screened as it is loaded into boats and started on its way to market. Compared with the anthracite regions, it requires but a small capital here to sustain an extensive plant, and produce a large quantity of coal. Therefore we find, as we should expect to find, that in the bituminous districts the bulk of the coal is produced by individuals, firms, and small companies. In the anthracite regions, however, this rule is reversed. Of the 36,204,000 tons of anthracite produced in the year 1887, 16,109,387 tons, or nearly one half, were mined by five great companies; namely: The Philadelphia and Reading; Delaware and Hudson; Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western; Lehigh Valley; and Pennsylvania Coal Company. The immense out-put of as many more large corporations left but a very small proportion of the total product to the small companies, firms, and individuals.

It follows, as a matter of course, that the acreage of coal lands held by these companies bears the same proportion to the total acreage that their coal out-put bears to the entire coal out-put. That is, they either own or hold under lease the great bulk of the coal beds of the anthracite regions. The value of coal lands varies with the number, thickness, and accessibility of the coal seams contained in it. In the very early days of anthracite mining these lands were purchased from farmers and others at from twenty and thirty dollars to one hundred dollars per acre. Before 1850 the price had advanced, in the Wyoming region, to from seventy-five dollars to two hundred dollars per acre. Recently a piece of coal land was sold in this region for $1,200 per acre, and another piece, containing thirty-six acres, was sold at the rate of $1,500 per acre. Perhaps from $800 to $1,000 per acre might be considered an average price. In the Middle and Southern anthracite regions the coal lands are of still greater value; not because the quality of the mineral is better, nor because the market for it is more accessible, but because the coal seams dip at a greater angle, and, therefore, a given number of acres contains a larger amount of coal.

The system of leasing coal lands to coal operators is a very common one, especially in the Wyoming valley, where the surface is so richly adapted to agricultural uses. The proprietor can, in this way, retain the use of the soil, and at the same time reap a handsome profit from the development of the mineral deposits beneath it. He invests no capital, runs no risk, and is sure of a steady income. As it is usual to work leased coal seams, wherever convenient, from openings made on the adjoining lands owned by the company, it is not often that the surface of leased property is interfered with, or if it is, but a comparatively small area of it is taken. The contract of lease usually stipulates that a certain royalty shall be paid to the lessor for each ton of coal mined, and it binds the lessee to mine not less than a certain number of tons each year; or at least to pay royalties on not less than a certain number of tons each year, whether that number is or is not mined. Twenty years or more ago coal lands in the Wyoming district could be leased at the rate of ten cents per ton. Lately a large body of coal land was rented to the Lehigh Valley Coal Company at forty-five cents per ton, and it is said that one proprietor at Kingston has been offered a lease at fifty cents per ton, and has refused it. Perhaps from twenty-five cents to thirty-five cents per ton would be an average rate.

As an example of the immense purchases made by these companies, it may be noted that the Philadelphia and Reading Company, in 1871, purchased one hundred thousand acres of coal lands in the Schuylkill region, at a cost of forty millions of dollars. And as an example of the amount of business done in a year, it may be noted that the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company paid in 1887 $5,019,147.16 for the single item of mining coal, and that their coal sales for the same year amounted to $10,100,118.69.