These miners helped construct the deep mines and dug and blasted the coal from the seams deep under the earth's surface. There were two big engineering problems in mining coal underground: A system to drain water from the mine A system to ventilate the mine and to provide fresh air to the miners.
A special problem in coal mines was the methane a gas that sometimes accompanied coal, and which could--and too often did--catch fire and explode. Andrew Roy was one of the expert coal miners who migrated from Britain to work in American mines. Roy worked in the bituminous coal fields in Ohio, and became a leader of the miners and a leader of their efforts to build a coal miners union.
Roy was self-educated, a veteran of the Civil War, and an unusual man in that he became active in the mine safety movement among the miners and eventually became Ohio's first State Inspector of Mines. Roy wrote: All mines have water in them. In many drift mines, particularly in those in which the workings extend to the rise of the strata, the water is discharged by gravitation.
In slopes and shafts natural drainage is impossible, and the waters of the mine must be pumped or lifted out by steam power. Coal Before the Civil War In people began using anthracite coal to make iron. This advance increased the efficiency of the iron furnaces, as well as improved the quality of the iron. Production levels remained high through the years leading up to the Civil War, even though prices fell.
By , over 20 million tons of anthracite came out of American coal mines. The demands of the Union military led to more coalfields opening, including new bituminous coal mines in Maryland, Ohio, and Illinois. Railroads expanded to reach these new mines and became an integral part of the coal trade. Railroads also began purchasing coalfields directly and leasing them to mining companies. The railroads opened the coalfields of West Virginia by connecting them with industrial outlets.
The coast-to-coast railroad built immediately following the Civil War provided access to coalfields west of the Mississippi River. New technology drove the evolution of the industry. Extraction of coal went underground, requiring pumps and new machinery to obtain the coal. The industry also developed methods to clear bituminous coal of its impurities by producing coke, a fuel with few impurities and a high carbon content, crucial to making iron and steel.
The coal industry was privatised in Miners are pictured at the top of the Clipstone pit shaft in January when the pit was taken over by RJB mining. It had been closed since April By , UK coal production was exceeded by imports. Coal on the conveyor at the pit head at the Longannet mine, Scotland. Since , when the federal government first began compiling statistics on coal mining deaths, over , coal miners have been crushed, gassed, electrocuted or incinerated underground, and well over 15 times as many have been seriously injured.
None of this carnage includes the ravages of pneumoconiosis, or black lung, which has made the lungs of generations of coal miners as porous as fishing nets. These dangers have been inextricable from the labor history of coal mining—and, as the future of the industry hangs in the balance, that past is still worth remembering.
The often deadly hazards of being a coal miner were on full display during the early morning hours of Nov. Seventy-eight miners working the midnight-to-8 a. Then, while the 78 miners still lay entombed in the burning mine, W. Yablonski cautioned the assembled reporters that none of this was going to be easy; these reforms might cost him his life. He was right.
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