The Age of Mechanization – 1920-1929
Throughout the late teens and into the early 1920s, modern “progressive” mines were rapidly experimenting with various forms of mechanization. Loaders, cutters, conveyors and other new machines were being tested nationwide under all conditions. Machines were seen as ways to reduce both the costs and difficulties of labor, particularly as more miners were organizing and demanding higher wages. Machines also changed the way mining was done, creating new opportunities and helping increase production.
In 1920, production of bituminous coal was more than 556,500,000 net tons, an increase of over 98 million tons or 21% above 1919. That year’s total had been the second highest yet just behind 1918’s total of 579 million bituminous tons. Anthracite coal, once predominant, accounted for only 89 million tons that year. In total, more than 677 million tons were mined in 1918—a figure that would not be exceeded until 1944. 1920’s total of 657 million tons was equaled again in 1923 and 1926. Though coal production fell to a low of 476 million in 1922, average production through the decade was roughly 588 million tons a year. 1926 proved a highpoint however, as the economy began to wane ahead of the Great Depression. In general, however, coal production would not equal the 1920s levels until the height of World War II in 1944.
As coal production increased in 1920, the editors noted in a summary piece from January 1921 that “all producing fields did not share equally in the gain…we find that the Middle West—Illinois, Indiana and western Kentucky—made the largest gain, 38 percent. The increase in quantity was 36,400,000 tons, exceeded only by that in the middle and northern Appalachian territory…comprising the coalfields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Michigan and eastern Kentucky, produced in 1920, 332,148,000 net tons of bituminous coal, a gain over the previous year of 43,837,000 tons, or 15 per-cent…Illinois, according to the preliminary figures of the Geological Survey, in 1920 reached the goal for which she has been striving for years, namely to replace West Virginia as the second largest coal producing state. West Virginia’s output increased only about 10 million net tons over 1919, while Illinois gained nearly 25 million tons.”
The Illinois Basin, that year, produced at roughly the same levels as the previous high water mark of 1918 while the rest of the nation’s production fell. However, once again the most limiting factor in coal production was not demand or labor but availability of railroad cars. “From the first week of January until the middle of December, car shortage was the principal factor in limiting production…that is, each week of this period the demand for coal was in excess of the ability of the railroads to carry it from the mines.” So much then for the government’s ability to run the railroads better than the railroads themselves. However, the low production mark of 1922 was largely due to massive nationwide railroad strikes as well as mine strikes in the east and Midwest.
As coal production increased in 1920 by more than 16%, fatalities declined by over 7% year-over-year. The fatality rate in 1920 was 3.39 per million tons compared to 4.28 per million tons in 1919. One of the main reasons for that reduction was the rapid increase of mechanization throughout the nation’s largest mines. In the March 6, 1920, issue, Coal Age published the first feature on the new Joy loading machine, “one of the devices developed during the war for the purpose of stimulating coal production. This has only recently been perfected and is now offered to the industry. The inventor, J.F. Joy, is the head of the Joy Machine Co., with main office in the Union Arcade Building, Pittsburgh, Pa. Development of the machine was fostered by the Pittsburgh Coal Co., and most of the tests necessary in perfecting the mechanical principles involved in the construction were made at the Somers No. 2 mine of this company. This operation, which is used principally as an experimental one, is located at Belle Vernon, about 42 miles south of Pittsburgh.”
“It is the dream of every operator to increase production, decrease labor, and at the same time be able to reduce overhead expenses,” wrote the editors in their feature on the new Joy machine. Mechanical devices were largely making that possible. “In mines where a friable roof is encountered, machine loading permits of a more rapid advance of room and entries, with a consequent earlier drawing of pillars.” In the tests, the Joy machine was used in standard room-and-pillar operation with entries 9 ft wide on 50 ft centers. The coal was first “undercut to a depth of about 7 ft by means of Sullivan shortwall mining machines and shot down in the usual manner with black powder. The Joy loading machine was then employed to supplant” the usual handloading methods. “The machine, which weighs about 9 tons, is electrically driven and is 29½ ft long, 5 ft wide and 5 ft high. It is moved under its own power at a maximum speed of 8 miles per hour, the speed of travel being at all time under the control of the operator.”
As detailed in accompanying illustrations, “two conveyors are embraced in the construction. One of these reaches from the gathering mechanism to a storage hopper that constitutes the body of the machine. A second conveyor is utilized to discharge the coal from the hopper in to the mine car, which is located to the rear of the machine. Both conveyors are flexibly mounted on the supporting track and may be swung to nearly any angle. This feature of construction permits the machine to traverse short-radius curves such as those at room entrances. The gathering mechanism is placed at the forward end of the loading conveyor. Briefly, it consists of a pair of geared fingers that are arranged so as to be positively driven in a fixed orbital path. The initial movement of the fingers is forwards into the coal, after which there is a raking motion across the coal face and then a rearward movement tows the loading conveyor.”
“After the machine has been brought into the room where it is desired to load the coal, the loading conveyer is lowered so as to bring the gathering mechanism at the front end into contact with the floor The machine is then propelled forward until the gathering mechanism is in close proximity to the loosened coal, after which it is set in motion and machine body moved forward on the track until the fingers in their orbital movement engage the coal and gathering it onto the loading conveyor.”
“The principals involved in the construction of the machine are departures from any other attempts that have been made along this line…The new loading machine was first placed in service on December 1, 1917, and has been operated continuously ever since. Several of the machines are now in operation, each of which is capable of maintaining an average daily production of 100 tons. This is really a highly conservative figure for an eight-hour day.”
The initial Joy machine required a three-person crew: operator, a helper and a car pusher. “The operators duty is to supervise the handling of the machine in its various operations and to assist with the cleaning of the coal as it passed up the loading conveyor and into the storage hopper…The duties of the helper are to clean up the coal fragments that may be left by the machine in the corners of the room and to assist in separating the draw slate. He may also place such temporary timbers as may be necessary. The car pusher’s duty is to place the empty car under the lip of the discharging conveyor after the loaded car has been removed by the driver.” In the initial tests, almost 40-60 tons of rock was loaded for every 100 tons of coal. But “it is quite probable that if the machine had been operating in a bed free from troublesome draw slate the production would have been nearly if not quite doubled.”
The new Joy loader was only one of dozens of different machines being developed and pressed into service. To power them, operators were having to choose between direct and alternating current electrical systems, then also quite new. In a June 24, 1920, piece, author Charles B. Officer from Chicago, Ill., detailed the history of AC motors being applied to continuous coal cutters. According to Officer, the first of these were deployed during the fall of 1912. “At the at time, a Sullivan continuous-cutting chain machine fitted with an induction motor was put into operation by the Star Mining Co. at Rugby, Colo.” Shortly afterward a second, nearly identical machine was employed by the Gordon Fuel Co. at Walsenburg, Colo. “These machines differed from the standard “CE-7” equipment in that an induction motor with suitable starting apparatus replaced the direct-current motor with its starting mechanism. The induction motor and the direct-current machine it replaced were of the same rated horsepower.” From the beginning, it was “evident that the application of alternating electric current to coal-cutting equipment was, and would be, successful and economical.”
At the time of the article’s publication, the largest single installation employing AC current underground was at the mines of the Nokomis Coal Co. at Nokomis, Ill. “Here 32 Sullivan “Ironclad” machines are being operated with 220-volt 3-phase 60-cycle current. The Nokomis Coal Co. was the first in the state of Illinois to use continuous coal cutters equipped with alternating-current motors. It began the operation of these machines in 1913. Since that date the proportion of coal mined in Illinois with alternating current equipment has increased till now about one-fifth of the coal produced by machines is cut by such equipment.”
Easier to operate and less expensive to purchase, due to needing less copper, AC machines also required less electricity to run. Another consideration favoring AC was greater safety attained in operation. “Should anybody come into contact with the feed line or any part of a live direct-current circuit, he would be subject to a shock from a current of this potential.”
Mechanization was addressed again in an August 17, 1922, article titled “Can Mechanical Replace Human Energy in Underground Loading?”—a summary of a series of papers, in particular one read by J.F. Joy, that were presented at a meeting of the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania. At the meeting, Joy broke down the costs involved in loading coal in terms of power required. “The annual production in the United States, which totals more than 500,000,000 tons is loaded at the face by approximately 400,000 miner workers out of the 750,000 employed…this operation absorbs the greater part of the labor employed in the mining of coal. It is said that a man at work will through an eight-hour shift develop 1/10 of a horsepower, so that for 400,000 miners the power equivalent is 40,000 hp. Converting this value to kilowatt-hours and allowing 200 working days per year, the work equivalent resolves itself into 47,744 kW/hr. With a daily wage of $5 it will be seen that the loading process costs the coal industry $400,000,000 per year or $10,000 a year for each horsepower. Similarly the work costs almost $10 per kw/hr or four to five hundred times the cost of electrical energy.”
Joy and other engineers had, by 1922, been long focused on replacing human power with mechanical. Part of the problem up until then was that the mines were designed and built with only human power in mind. “To make conditions more suitable to the handling of a particular type of machine the cry has been raised to supplant the room and pillar system by one of the many wall systems.” Room-and-pillar, according to Joy was the method used by 98% of the industry at the time, so the question was also one of adopting the new machines to that format. Unfortunately, the early machines also broke down frequently and were often available less than 50% of the time.
By 1924, however, many of these early problems were being worked out and over 20 different kinds of loading machines were in use nationwide. By then, according to J.F. Joy, more than 200 of his company’s machines were then in operation nationwide. The second largest machine producer, Myers-Whaley Co. had about 40 machines then in operation as well. “Asked as to the savings affected by the operation of his machines, Mr. Joy said that the only knowledge he had was from an operator in West Virginia who claimed that he could load with his Joy loader at about 30c. per ton less than by handloading…based on the 1920 wage scale.”
While eastern producers were learning how best to use and develop the new loading machines, at the Union Pacific Railroad underground Hanna No. 4 mine, operators were trying to mechanically mine a huge 32 ft seam. Though blessed with good roof conditions, a lack of available timber presented serious challenges. The company turned to large Thew shovels working in conjunction with Joy loaders. They “earned their keep” during the first six months of the year, said Eugene McAuliffe, president of the company in an October 30, 1924, article. Compared to handloading, the Thews saved nearly 28c a ton and the Joys saved 11 ct ton. “Together the saving averaged 25.2c a ton; but it was Mr. McAuliffe’s opinion that neither type of machine could have done it alone…The system at Hanna is for the Joy machines to take out the lower 8 ft of the 32-ft seam in rooms 32 ft wide and sometimes 800 to 1,000 ft long. The Thews then load out the next 18 ft above, the aim being to leave 6 ft of top coal to hold the soft sandstone roof.”
Introduced just before the war, McAuliffe reported the process took some refinement until it became more profitable than handloading. At first the men were indifferent and out-right hostile to the new Thews and later the Joy machines, but at the time “production and costs are reasonably good…With better results from the Thew shovels, the officials of the company soon realized that it was necessary to find some means by which rooms would be developed faster than mere human power could drive them, for otherwise the Thew shovels would soon exhaust the working places available. So in November 1923, the company purchased two Type 4BU Joy loaders.” When used in tandem, the Thews averaged 140 tons per day per loader and the Joys were averaging 104 tons per day—a definitive increase over manpower alone.
In a survey piece from January 1926, the editors reviewed the 500 mechanical loaders in operation nationwide. “Most of these loaded more than 75 tons per shift. By assuming this as an average for 200 days” machine loading was still only 1.5% of total bituminous production, roughly 8 million tons. “Joy machines in operation during 1925, numbering 175, have produced nearly 4 ½ million tons.” Some producers were able to mine up to 1,200 tons per day with the Joys, depending on conditions. Jeffrey shortwall loaders, McKinlay entry drivers, Goodman scrapers and Myers-Whaley products made up the bulk of the other machines then in use. Both the Joy and the Myers-Whaley machines received upgrades toward years end. “Thus it is apparent that not only have mining men increased their knowledge of how to fit loaders into methods of mining but several manufacturers have been able to alter to their own opportunities and have equipped the industry with more effective loading machines for 1926. Machine loading is steadily advancing.”
“In the continuous quest of lower production costs, American operators in large numbers are trying conveyors” wrote Associate Editor Frank H Kneeland, in a February 25, 1926, article. “One of the simplest oscillating or jigging conveyors so far tried is known as the Eickhoff…It is presently in daily operation in several states including Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wyoming. This conveyor is built in sections of varying widths and lengths to suit local conditions.” Operation of the conveyor was easily applicable to room and pillar operations. “As the room advances section after section of chute is added until full room depth has been attained.” The Eickhoff transports coal “by a combination of differential oscillation and a vertical movement. The sectional pan carries upon its bottom a vertically curved track made of angle iron within which the supporting rollers travel. On the floor or mounted on blocking depending upon the desired height similar but reversed tracks are placed. The rollers that operate between these two trackways or raceways are wheels about 8 in. in diameter with ¾ faces. These are fastened together and held to gage by a 1-in. shaft or axle extending between them. Each pair of wheels therefore constitutes a single rigid roller of light weight that allows the conveyor trough to move back and forth with only a small amount of friction and effort.”
In a June 3, 1926, article operators discussed the financial and manpower savings they were enjoying because of the new machines. Following the delivery of a paper entitled “Mechanical Loading in Rooms and Entries” by I.N. Bayless, superintendent of the Union Colliery Co., in Dowell, Ill., the author was questioned about how many men were “saved” by the machines. Bayless responded that the machines “have eliminated 204 men with no change in the daily output of the mine. In answer to another question, Mr. Bayless said that all except the machine cutters are paid a flat day wage.”
Knowing that breakdowns would occur, Bayless suggested that operators always keep spare machines on hand. However, “these loaders have increased the daily output per man on the payroll from 5.5 to 8.5 tons. The record output per man employed at his mine for one day is 11 tons,” he reported.
Perhaps the symbolic height of the new machine age came when Captain Charles Lindbergh made his record setting New York to Paris, France, flight May 20-21, 1927. In an editorial published five days later, Engineering Editor Dawson Hall exclaimed that Lindbergh’s feat proved “the machine age has arrived. It remains now for the operator to develop through careful management the necessary coordination of his man forces with machines of production….The coal industry in the midst of this drama of coordination of men and machine salutes the great Lindbergh and his almost human machine.”
Just a few issues later, in the August edition of the new monthly Coal Age, H.O. Rogers of the U.S. Bureau of Mines hailed the tipping point of mechanization with a long feature “Exit the Mule,” documenting the shift from animal to mechanical power, particularly for underground haulage. “Of the 7,361 deep mines in operation during 1924, there were 3,585, producing 88 percent of the output, that reported the use of locomotives of some type underground. The mines not using locomotives, although numbering 3,776, produced only 12 percent of the output.” According to the survey, although there were more than 36,000 animals still being used underground (8,843 in Pa.; 5,906 in W.Va.; and 4,378 in Ill.), 14,723 locomotives were being employed nationwide. Included in the animal survey were “a few dogs used in small mines working thin coal.”
Though mechanical transformation was on the rise, “the extent to which animals can be dispensed with and the entire work of haulage be performed with locomotives, depends upon physical conditions…In many mines, working thin coal, gathering locomotives have been introduced simply because mules could not be used in the room and entries without excessive lifting of bottom or brushing of top. Elimination of mules further depends on local practice with respect to hand tramming or pushing of cars, which is also related to thickness of seam.” Mirroring a nationwide trend, the author concludes that “the mule is disappearing from the mines just as the horse is vanishing from the country’s highways. His place is being taken chiefly by the much faster and more efficient electric locomotive.”
Nowhere was the spirit of mechanization greater than in the coalfields of southern Illinois’ Franklin County where, in the spring of 1922, the two largest bituminous mines in the state duked it out hoist for hoist for title of most productive mine in the world. After a decade of highly publicized struggles and failures, Chicago’s Bell & Zoller Co., had rebuilt and retooled much of the Zeigler No. 1 mine while incorporating its original audacity. Constructed with greatness in mind by Chicago financier Joseph Leiter early in the new century, the “top works he built astonished the coal industry. No shaft at that time was producing more than 1,500 tons a day and many a good engineer figured that was about the limit. The Zeigler mine equipment was good for 5,000 tons a day!” reported E.W. Davidson, western editor in the May 25, 1922, issue. This capacity would come in handy when “the mine, in a tremendous 27-day production race with its neighboring rival, Orient No. 1, twice broke the world’s record for daily output only to lose it finally to the other mine. But in those 27 days, Zeigler set the world’s high mark for monthly production, hoisting 164,109 tons. Mr. Leiter’s fanciful 1904 dream of some time getting 5,000 tons of coal a day out of the mine was nothing compared to the cold facts of the mine’s performance that month. It exceeded 5,000 tons every day but one and once touched 7,537 tons.”
Though much of the original equipment including the hoisting skip installed between 1904-1906 “did its bit” during the race, the mine had been upgraded by installing a rotary car dump at the bottom in 1917—perhaps the nation’s first underground—and had upgraded to a high capacity steam-turbine driven 750-kw 2,300 volt alternator providing power throughout the mine. It also had four shafts instead of the usual two. “Its main shaft, built to accommodate a pair of 8-ton skip hoists, is separated by a partition from the man shaft, in which a double-deck cage operates.” But the shafts were too small to accommodate an ordinary mine car. “So the fourth shaft—a passageway for material alone—was sunk in 1920 about 100 yards form the main shaft. Thus the mine has its skipway, its man hoist, its airshaft and its material shaft…The 8-ton skips in the main shaft are loaded at the bottom of the big hopper, where an operator about 40 ft below the level of the dumping tracks, opens and closes with compressed air the sliding doors in the mouth of the hopper…during that feverish month of March when the great mine was exerting itself and when good luck was with it every day, the daily hoist ran from 4,100 to 7,537 tons, with an average of 6,078 tons.”
Coal Age continued to tell the tale in the August 31 issue that year from the victor’s side. “By raising 8,218 tons of coal in a single shaft on March 25, 1922, the Orient mine of the Chicago, Wilmington & Franklin Coal Co. established a one-day single-balanced-hoist record that so far has never been beaten.”
Admitting there were single breakers in the anthracite region “that not only handled but actually prepared more coal than the Orient and Zeigler shafts lifted and the surface plants prepared,” the editors distinguished the bituminous and anthracite fields as inherently different places to operate. And, unlike anthracite breakers, “the tonnage of each of the Illinois shafts all came to one landing and was hoisted up one shaft by one hoist. There was a concentration not only in regard to time but in regard to facilities of operation.”
However, unlike those anthracite operations, “Zeigler produced on its best day about 8.1 tons per man and during the whole month averaged 6.78 tons. The average output per loader per day for the whole month was 11.7 tons and per machine man 95.9 tons…these records are exceptionally good.” Besides glory, also propelling the men at each mine was an impending strike to commence “on or after April 1 [that] made every man paid by the ton anxious to do his utmost so as to obtain the largest possible cash reserve for the long period of idleness which was in view.”
However both mines were about to be overshadowed by the New Orient (Orient No. 2) mine that would go into full production in 1925 and quickly become the world’s most productive bituminous mine. Under construction since May 1921, Coal Age first featured the mine in the March 12, 1925, issue, would update readers about its massive new hoist for the April 9 edition and then devote nearly an entire magazine to the New Orient in the September 9, 1926, issue, stating that “for the present, New Orient is the last word in an industry in which constant improvement calls continuously for betterment.” In 1925, its first year in operation, the mine increased average daily output from 6,211 tons in January to a whopping 9,757 tons per day. On December 15, New Orient’s 1,377 men shattered the world record and hoisted 12,825 tons to the surface. Designed to produce 3.6 million tons per year, CW&F management predicted the mine would be capable of producing 4.5 to 5.4 million tons per year if the market for Illinois coal was steady enough.
Underground, each of New Orient’s main entry groups had four headings “constituting a pair of pairs”—22 loading machines were used and the mine’s aircourse was rock dusted, a practice new at the time. The loading machines are “chiefly used in heading driving. To date, more than 125,000 linear ft of entry have been driven mechanically. During the earlier stages of underground development, by an agreement with the United Mine Workers, the loading machines were operated three shifts per day. Consequently, the rate of development by machine loading methods was 50 percent greater than by hand loading.” At the time of the author’s visit, “six loading machines were put to work in a concentration plan for working rooms. These machines were then loading an average of 125 tons per shift each.”
Revolutionary Rock Dusting: Coal Age Helps Spread the New Safety Tool
In 1926, rock dusting was new to the U.S. coal industry and was being rapidly adopted by the most progressive operations. “New Orient of course, is thoroughly rock-dusted. By the careful maintaining of rock dust where needed, the danger of coal dust in this mine has been eliminated as proved by an unfortunate explosion last winter which was checked by rock dust within a short distance of its origin. Not only are all haulways coated with rock dust, but the stretches of aircourse from crosscut to crosscut are also being thus treated before track is torn up. The first application of dust is of 3 ½ lb. per linear ft. The quantity and the time for the application of additional dust are determined by the analyses of samples which are taken systematically.” Though the explosion in discussion killed five men, “New Orient management is convinced that rock dust saved it from an explosion of great magnitude.” In addition to dusting, to prevent an explosion from spreading from panel to panel “a large rock-dust shelf is erected on each side of the stopping in the chain-pillar crosscut between.”
Rock dusting was a subject the magazine had been treating since May 1924, when, just weeks after the horrific Castlegate mine blast in Utah that killed 171 men, Coal Age published feature on the British practice of “Stone Dusting.” Leeds University professor J. A. S. Ritson clamed that stone dusting was largely responsible for a British fatality rate 1/3 as large as the U.S. “Soon after the erection in 1908 of an experiment station at Altofts, England…two facts were thoroughly demonstrated. They were: That coal dust might form an explosive mixture with air and that fine stone dust acts as a barrier to the spread or propagation of a coal-dust explosion.” In the six page feature, Ritson presents scientific evidence of his thesis and offers solutions as well examples of methods to spread the rock dust.
In the same issue, Coal Age reported that shale dusting was spreading rapidly in Illinois. As part of an interview with J.E. Jones, safety engineer at Old Ben Coal Corp., who has “more experience in rock dusting than any man in this country,” the magazine reported that the new technology’s adoption was largely due to a tour by members of the British Mines Department had made through the region. Spurred on by the deaths of more than 400 men from explosions beginning January 1, virtually all of the large mines in southern Illinois were adopting the new technology. Old Ben at the time had started applying “shale dust in its mines in four ways: in concentrated barriers containing one and a half to three tons of dust, in V-shaped troughs, piled on platforms elevated a few feet from the floor and spread on roof and ribs. It is roof-and-rib dusting which is now being introduced into many of the large mines of southern Illinois.”
To spread the shale dust, a new device, the traveling blower, was developed. To pulverize the dust to a fineness of 250-mesh was also difficult, as was figuring out the best mixture of dust to suppress explosions. Each day they got it wrong, the chemists and technicians who were working at these mines feared could bring news of another preventable disaster. By May of that year, Mr. Jones was able to boast that between all the mines of Franklin County, the protection against explosion had been extended to a point where 4,350 of the 12,855 underground men…are protected with shale dust and 1,925 with enclosed lights.”
Franklin County’s gassy coalfields were quickly expanding. And as it did, so did the amount of fatalities. From 1904-1921 deaths there were “nearly double that of the state for the same period. The difference in the rate was largely due to the fatalities which were the result of mine explosions. The number fatalities in Franklin county mines from all causes during this eighteen-year period was 533, of which 203 were caused by gas and coal-dust explosions…In Franklin County…the chief improvement has been a better understanding of the dangers of gas and a consequent greater respect for it. Formerly, naked lights were often used by fire bosses during their examination, and it was considered a great joke to frighten someone by igniting a pocket of gas.”
In a June 19, 1924, article by J.E. Jones he detailed how Old Ben, using rock dust, had extinguished seven mine explosions since 1917. “From the experience gained a rough appraisal can be made of the relative effectiveness of the various types of rock dust protection, of the means by which the protection may be afforded most readily and of the frequency with which dust applications must be made.” In the article, Jones proffered his formula for best rock dust mixtures, his experiments and observations and his drawings for machines to distribute it throughout the mine. The information spread and rock dusting became widely adopted throughout the industry.
By May 20, 1926, the U.S. Bureau of Mines had completed a long series of tests and they could state in a piece penned by J.W. Paul and C.A Herbert that “It has been shown in repeated tests in the Experimental Mine of the Bureau that rock dust when properly used is 100 percent efficient.” Titled “Rock-Dusting Promptly Checks Coal Dust Explosions,” the authors re-tell incident by incident times when coal dust prevented the further propagation of an explosion and saved the lives of miners in dusted areas. “Great risk is taken when only part of a mine is treated with rock dust, such as the haulage roads, leaving the aircourses and trackless entries without this protection. A practice such as this invites disaster.” However, “rock dust, properly applied and maintained is a panacea for coal-dust explosions, and when its use has become a daily routine at all bituminous coal mines, the wholesale loss of life in mines will be at an end.”
Preparation: How to Make Coal Float
With the June 2, 1921, issue, Coal Age published the first feature article on the coal flotation process of preparation then prevalent in England. Written by E.G. Hill of Pittsburgh, the piece describes how, using this process, fine coal attaches itself to oil and bubbles, thus floating away with the froth. Though gravitational methods were used in separating coal from its impurities, “it is now proposed to use oil to collect coal and to make a froth to which coal” and coal fines would adhere. Hill recites how the process was accidentally determined while chemists were working to separate other types of materials selectively. He also goes on to discuss the use of pyrite, which tends to float as readily as coal.
Though the use of heavy media was a new concept as applied to coal, Hill confidently believed that “there can be little doubt that the time will come when it will be applied to the reclaiming of fine coal from waste products and to the preparation of low-ash coal from high-ash coal. The process should appeal to metallurgical coke producers, especially if sulphur be also reduced. The sulphur elimination probably will be a fairly hard problem, but when one considers that in ore concentration pyrite has been made to sink in a pulp while other minerals were floated, its solution would appear possible.” Hill closed by stating that experiments on some Pennsylvania coals were then under way at the School of Mines, University of Pittsburgh. “Upon completion of these tests we hope to be able to give more detailed information as to regains, action of materials, etc.”
While heavy media separation would eventually gain widespread acceptance, even by the end of the decade, in 1929 when Coal Age presented an in-depth look at the preparation plants of the Pittsburgh Coal Co., modernization still meant applying mechanization to preparation and cleaning. J.B. Morrow, manager of preparation for the company, described the methods then being used at four mechanical prep plants. Three use the “Rheolaveur wet process for cleaning coal and one [uses the] Arms dry tables [process]. The combined annual capacity of these four plants is 9,250,000 tons.”
For the article, Morrow focused on the Champion No. 1 plant’s original design and how it had been modernized. The factors governing the design was “1) The desirability of receiving mine-run coals of varying qualities and varying percentage of sizes and separating them into a plus 4-in. product suitable for hand-picking and a minus 4-in product which could be prepared mechanically…2) The desirability of being able to mix the products after cleaning in the same relative proportions as that in which they were received from the mine…3) The desirability of shipping a constant-ash product regardless of the variation in ash in the feed product from the individual mines…4) The desirability of erecting a type of plant in which low operating costs would be the principal consideration…5) The desirability of departing from the conventional idea that a coal preparation plant must be a dark and dingy establishment. It was believed that the extra expense necessary to remove dust and obviate spillage would be more than compensated by the added efficiency of the operatives and the reduced cost of maintenance.”
After the plus 4-in coal was separated by the slate pickers and magnets swept the product looking for “tramp iron,” all the coal was delivered and cleaned by “two primary Rheolaveur launders operating in parallel, each of which is equipped with two Rheo boxes. The first set of Rheo boxes over which the coal passes, after primary classification, removes practically all of the refuse, some of the middling products and some of the fine coal. These materials are dropped into the sealed boot of the No. 1 conveyor and after de-watering are delivered to the re-treating launder.” Accompanying the article was a special color pull-out schematic of the Champion No. 1 plant further describing the preparation process.
Surface Mining in the 1920s: Kansas, Montana and Illinois are Leaders
In 1898, at the Clemons Coal Co., Pittsburg, Kan., overburden was removed by horse and plow. Eventually 20 ft became the stripping limit. In an August 1923 article and photo essay, Coal Age illustrated the progress made since. In the photos “gigantic steam and electric shovels as big as any used anywhere move 50 ft of overburden handling 4,000 to 6,000 cu yd a day with a 6-yd dippers working on an 80-ft boom. Today strip-pit loaders almost dispense with hand shovels and “elbow grease…[since] mechanism has eliminated from stripping much of its hard, hot work.”
In a series of articles published in mid-1924, Grant Holmes of Danville, Ill., an early pioneer of surface mining, detailed how the “art” of stripping was born in northern Illinois as early as 1866 and would be perfected over the next 60 years. “Since 1875, Holmes, of Danville, has had his hand and mind on coal stripping. Half a century of it successfully as mechanic, boss, operator, advisor to and rescuer of failing strip companies, and finally as an investor and director in many stripping companies in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania have given him a background in stripping such as few men have. Probably no one is as well qualified as he to tell the story of coal stripping from its beginnings,” stated the editors.
Through two articles, Holmes traces the evolution from stripping from horse team and scrapers on the Illinois plains to the Kansas-Missouri border around 1877. The articles show how the Missionfield mine, near Danville, owned for many years by the Consolidated Coal Co. of St. Louis, was a proving ground for various types of surface mining technology. Starting with an Otis steam shovel in 1885, a crew of experienced dredgemen brought in a steam dredge built by the Marion Steam Shovel Co. In 1890, the Butler Bros. were hired to use a new dragline excavator on the property. Eventually three draglines, with bucket capacities ranging from ¾ to 1 cu yd were brought in. By the end of the 19th century, Consolidated was enjoying an output of more than 1,000 tons of coal a day.
Holmes recounted how some of the first machines brought in were so powerful they ended up shaking themselves apart. Eventually, as the draglines got bigger and become more stabilized, they were able to produce more effectively. “Two years of persuasion finally moved the Marion Steam Shovel Co. to begin the construction of a revolving shovel built according to the dimensions and ideas of Holmes. The 3½ yd dipper 40-ft handle, 65-ft boom and 150 ton weight made this machine the largest in the world at the at time. In the spring of 1911, the big shovel, known as Model 250, began work in Missionfield.” The shovel saw years of service and news of its success spread worldwide, leading to the construction of similar revolving steam shovels by Bucyrus and other companies.
The ultra-modern new Colstrip mine in Montana was the subject of several 1925 articles. The nation’s first completely electrified open-pit operation, “the coal bed, about 180 acres in extent and 25 ft deep, is owned by the Northwestern Improvement Co. and is being worked by Foley Bros., general contractors of St. Paul, Minn. The coal is subbituminous with a heat content of about 11,000 Btu. The output of the mine will be used for the locomotives of the Northern Pacific Railroad in Montana…complete electric equipment was purchased for stripping the overburden, mining the coal and hauling it. This equipment consists of an electric shovel with a 155-ft boom and 6-yd bucket, used as a dragline excavator for stripping, equipped with Ward-Leonard control; a coal loading shovel with direct-current drive, and two 60-ton electric storage-battery locomotives, the largest units in the coal fields. The coal loading shovel is a Bucyrus Model No. 175-B weighing 220 tons with a 75-ft boom and a 7-yd dipper.”
Since Colstrip’s product did not require cleaning and sizing, “the railroad spur is built into the pit so that coal is loaded directly into Northern Pacific cars. Trains of considerable length are handled in and out of the workings.” Coal Age reported that “the opening of the tract with the big shovels has also centered wide attention on the entire coal field in the Rosebud section of Montana…This operation is designed to produce eventually 5,000 tons of coal per day at a cost not to exceed 65c. per ton.”
In another piece in the November 12, 1925, issue, the magazine reported that the new mine was saving the Northern Pacific more than $700,000 a year in fuel costs. Calling the opening of the mine a “milestone in the economic progress of this industrial age,” author V.A. Wolcott said, “the economical results obtained by the use of this coal have encouraged the Northern Pacific to increase as rapidly as possible the number of locomotives using it, and it may be using 1,200,000 tons annually in the near future.”
Just to the southeast of the Colstrip mine, in the November 1928 issue R. Dawson Hall reviewed the operations of the Homestake Mining Co.’s Wyodak Coal and Manufacturing Co. surface mine, located about 5 miles east of the town of Gillette. Beneath the 25 ft of cover that contained many bison and beaver teeth and other bones laid a 96 ft seam of subbituminous that Wyodak was able to hydraulically remove. “The monitor which displaces the cover has a 6-ft barrel and a 1¼ in. opening. But because of the severity of the climate, the cover can be hydraulic only from April 1 to November. 1. The coal is shot with 40-percent blasting gelatin and drilled with 2-in. electric drills. The coal is lifted by a Marion No. 37 shovel into a hopper by which it is delivered to a 40-in. belt conveyor. The quantity of the material to be stripped is so small as compared with the quantity of coal to be removed that there will be no difficulty in finding a place for it.” By the time of Coal Age’s visit, about 200,000 tons of coal had been mined.
For the December 1929 issue, Hall penned one more surface mining piece treating what at the time was “America’s largest shovel and biggest strip mine, the Fidelity operation of the United Electric Coal Co. located near DuQuoin in southern Illinois. Comprising 6,158 acres and constituting a block of some 60 million tons the seam had an average thickness of 6 ft 5 in. “The average depth of the overburden is 45 ft, the heaviest cover being 60 ft and a ratio of overburden to coal of 7 to 1.” The largest stripping unit on property is a 15-yd Marion 5600 shovel with a boom length of 120 ft and an 82 ft long dipper. “As a matter of fact, as usually loaded the bucket carries when heaped, 18- to 20-cu yd of material.”
Besides the big 15-yd shovel, Fidelity also operates a 12-yd shovel and a 10-yd dragline. “They will given an opportunity for comparison with the 15-yd shovel, which itself furnishes the necessary experience for the development of future operations…it remains to be seen how much the 15-yd shovel is superior to the almost equally expensive tandem combination of a 12-yd shovel and 10-yd dragline. H.C. Swallow, president, United Electric Coal Co., desirous of leaving the stripping as an object of beauty in the painfully flat country of southern Illinois, has arranged with the State Forestry Department to plant 10 acres of land with trees every year, thus converting the relatively sterile plain into an irregular park-like forest of romantic beauty.”
The United Mine Workers, Led by John L. Lewis, Becomes an Institution
Industrial warfare broke out early in the decade, most spectacularly with the Matewan Massacre in May of 1920 when Sheriff Sid Hatfield and a group of striking miners shot it out with a number of Baldwin-Felts mine guards. Eleven men were killed including Matewan Mayor Testerman and Albert and Lee Felts. Hatfield became an instant hero to the miners and the victory helped unionize the southern West Virginia fields for the first time. But the mine owners fought back, smearing “Two-Gun Sid” at every turn. Unable to convict him for murder or corruption, Baldwin-Felts agents assassinated Hatfield on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch, W.Va., in August of the following year. Incensed miners organized an armed march on Logan, seen as the seat of power for the mine operators in the region—and so began the Battle of Blair Mountain.
In the September 1, 1921, edition, Coal Age reported on the conditions at the front. “A band of West Virginia mine workers, variously estimated between 4,000 and 6,000, many of them with arms, started from Marmet in the morning of August 25 for Mingo County. Marmet is only 12 miles from Charleston on the south shore of the Kanawha River…Mother Jones was a visitor to the Marmet camp and had the men ready to do anything to end martial law and all laws in Mingo County…The mine workers crossed into Boone County—‘enemy country’—on the first day…Two planes owned by the coal operators which followed the movements of the ‘army’ were fired on near Madison, in Boone County. The deputy sheriffs in the planes did not return fire though the wings of the machine were pierced by bullets. During the night of August 26 and the whole of August 27 the deputies of Sheriff Don Chafin of Logan County fought at intervals with the invaders. He sent out for help, and it was said that McDowell County sent 500 men by automobiles and that 125 special state police, militiamen and deputies left Mingo County at daybreak for the scene. A band of 1,200 men crossed the line at Sharples, seized a special train sent to carry them home and ran it to the Coal River terminal branch near Blair.”
Eventually more than 10,000 miners would join the battle and would face down almost 5,000 armed guards, local and county police, and deputies. Bombs were dropped from airplanes as the struggle, already the largest domestic insurrection since the U.S. Civil War, began to resemble World War I battles. After days of trench warfare on Blair Mountain and with large amounts of dead and wounded, federal troops were called out to restore the peace. Army forces heavily pressured “neutral” Union officials to persuade the striking miners to return to their homes, but sporadic fighting was still being reported at deadline. Martial law was eventually declared, almost 1,000 miners were indicted for treason and troops would remain in southern West Virginia for several years to come.
The miner’s defeat helped break the union in southern West Virginia and eventually undermined its strength elsewhere. Higher production costs in unionized Pennsylvania and the north led to mine closures and reduced mining rates. Union roles plummeted nationwide as only unionized Illinois miners could compete nationally.
The union’s strength in Illinois, particularly in southern Illinois, led to the infamous June 1922 Herrin Massacre in which 23 men, predominantly strike-breakers, were killed in series of brutal, running battles. Though new, UWMA President John L. Lewis and other officials were never personally blamed for the violence, it was clear the Union was somehow involved. Coal Age reported, both in the aftermath of the battle and later, that courthouse dispatches revealed a snarling frustration with the lawlessness. More infuriating, over a two-year period, no jury would convict a single miner of wrong doing. Bloody Williamson County would make headline news throughout the decade leading to a nationwide boycott on Union produced coal from southern Illinois.
In the September 24, 1925, issue, special contributor Sydney A. Hale published a piece titled “How Strong is the Miners Union?” that attempted to parse out how powerful the UMWA still was after all the bloodshed. Asking “Has the strength which in 1922 moved President [Warren G. Harding] to confess that ‘except for such coal as comes from the districts worked by unorganized miners, the country is at the mercy of the United Mine Workers’ been so dissipated that the organization headed by John L. Lewis is no longer the controlling factor in the labor situation in the bituminous fields of the nation?’ Have the gains so painfully made in the early days of the movement and so effectively consolidated in later years been flung away in an obstinate and unreasoning attempt to maintain a wage basis that is economically out of line with competitive costs?”
Hale summarized the strength of the union after the Great War. “In the general strike of 1919 the power of the United Mine Workers was such that at one time or another during that six weeks’ suspension it was able to close down 71.6 percent of the actual productive capacity—measured by 1918 performance—of the bituminous coalfields of the United States. Between the end of that strike and March 31, 1922, union control weakened notably in eastern Kentucky and in the low-volatile regions of West Virginia, where the war had given organization a temporary foothold. Nevertheless when the call went out from Indianapolis for another general strike three years ago, the union was able to marshal enough support to cut off 73.3 percent of the productive capacity.”
A truce signed in Cleveland, Ohio, in August 1922 “marked the beginning of the end of the general bituminous strike which had started four and one-half months before. That truce continued the basic rates…fixed by the United States Bituminous Coal Commission in 1920, and averaging 27 percent above the war time scale…Another truce extended these rates until April 1, 1924. By the Jacksonville (Fla.) compact signed a year ago last February these rates are to be continued until April 1, 1927.”
This history was vital in understanding that current pay scales were based on wartime compromises and made during an economy that no longer was in existence. In order for union operations to remain competitive with non-union mines, they had to increase productivity and further mechanize. Under-capitalized mines in union districts worked less days or became idled. However by 1925, union operations in Pennsylvania were still operating an average of 213 days or more. In Illinois “which is, except for small country banks, completely unionized, [production] averaged just eleven days less than [non-union] West Virginia. Franklin County…lagged only six days behind McDowell County W.Va.” In essence, only the “better situated producing companies throughout the country were able to show a profit on their year’s business.” This was done despite spot prices plummeting from $4.38 per ton in January 1923 to only $2.18 in December of that year, less than the spot price of coal in 1918, 1920 and each year since. Faced with high costs, operators had no choice but to try to change the terms of the contract or sever ties with union. “No important union district has escaped some manifestation, some evidence of a determination to carry on without the union since it was impossible to carry on with it.” Further strikes and skirmishes seemed inevitable in 1925.
Though the Great Depression began in 1929, by then much of the coal industry had already been slumping for some time. Over production, speculation, high labor costs, crushing competition between union and non-union mines, less railroad traffic, declining industrial requirements and a tidal wave of cheap oil were all cutting into coal’s piece of the energy pie. Production plummeted almost 100 million tons from 1926 to 1928 from 657 million tons to 575 million tons, rebounded a bit the following year and fell back sharply to just 536 million tons in 1930—the high water mark for more than a decade to come. Nationwide producers began cutting production. Led by Consolidation Coal Co., operators throughout Appalachia began “concentrating” mining activity at only the most productive mines. In a July 1928 article, executives from around the nation were quoted in favor of further consolidation. “Elimination of sufficient excess capacity to bring production in line with consumption offers the only hope of permanent relief, in the opinion of William J. Clothier, president, Boone County Coal Corp. ‘Only those mines will be shut down which are forced to do so because their owners believe they cannot be made profitable. This is the survival of the fittest. The sooner those in the industry realize it and those operations are closed…the better it will be’ for the surviving operators, the miners and the public.”
