The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1897-09-15
MINING OUR g g
q BLACK DIAMONDS.

I have just spent a few days at the
United States geological survey in
Washington, writes Frank 6. Carpen-
ter, looking up facts about coal min
ing. The geclogists know more about
coal than any one else. They can tell
you lust how the world looked when
coal was made, and they describe how
there were ages of luxuriant growth
consisting of pine trees, fir trees and
all kinds of mosses and plants, which,
dying down year after year, became a
great matted bed of vegetation. They
tell you how this bed was bottled uF
by being covered up with rocks and
how it finally turned into coal. They
can tell you just how this happened
and how long it came to pass before
Noah was baby or Cain killed little
Abel outside the Garden Of Eden.
Men lived for thousands of years
upon the earth before they knew that
coal was good to burn. All the iron
made before the days of the middle
ages was with charcoal, and a fairy
tale is told in Belgium of how poor
blacksmith discovered Sbe first black
diamonds. He found that he could
not get along, for it took so much time
to make his charcoal for his furnace.
He was just about to commit suicide
when white-bearded old man ap-
peared at his shop and told him to go
to the mountains near by and dig out
the black earth and burn it. He did
80, and was able to make horseshoe
at one forging. This is the Belgian
story of the discovery of coal. The
first coal found in America was near
Ottawa, Illinois. 1t is mentioned by
Father Hennepin, a French explorer,
who visited there in 1879. The first
mines worked were about Richmond,
Va. This coal was discovered by a
boy while out fishing.
He was hunting for crabs for bait in
small creek, and thus stumbled upon
the outcroppings of the James River
coal bed. Our anthracite coal fields
have perhaps paid better than any
other coal fields of the world. They
were discovered by hunter named
Nicho Allen, when George Washing
ton was President. Allen encamped
one night in the Schuylkill regions,
kindling his fire upon some black
stones. He awoke to find himself al
most roasted. The stones were on fire,
and anthracite was burning for the
first time. Shortly after this com.
pany was organized to sell anthracite
coal. 1t was taken around to the black
smiths, but they did not know how to
use it, and it was very unpopular.
Some of it was shipped to Philadelphia
by q Colonel Shoemaker and sold
there. It was Lot at all satisfactory,
and a writ was gotten out from the
city authorities, denouncing the
colonel as knave and scoundrel for
trying to imposed rocks upon them as
coal. Still Philadelphia has largely
been built up by anthracite coal, and
5O,OO0,O 900 tons of this coal were taken
out of the Pennsylvania fields in 1896.
Since then some of these coal lands
have been sold as high as $1,000 an
acre, and the Philadelphia and Read
ing Company in 1871 paid $40, 100000
for 100000 acres of coal land in this
region. As a sample of the amount of
business done in anthracite coal, the
Delaware and Hudson Canal Company
paid $5, 00C, 600 in one year for mining,
and their coal sales thatye amounted
to more than 100000.
It is hard to estimate the enormous
amount of money the United States
makes out of its coal. We get more
than three times rs much out of our
coal mines as out of our gold mines,
and the silver metal is not in it with
the black diamonds. There is little
region in eastern Pennsylvania, about
hundred md twenty-five miles from
Philadelphia and not more than two
hundred miles from New York, which
produces every year coal to q greater
value than all the gold mines of the
Rockies, Canada and Alaska. 1t is
our anthracite coal folds which turn
out between so, 900, 900 and 60, 900, 900
tons of anthracite every year. We
have in addition to this hundred and
thirty odd million tons of bituminous
coal annually. We have, III short, tho
biggest and best coal measures on the
globe. It is estimated that our coal
east of the Rocky Mountains covers
$4,000 square miles, and within the
past few years coal has been found in
many parts of the Far West. Colorado
will eventually be great menufacsar-
ing State on account of its coal.
Utah has large coal felds, and so
have the States Of Montana, Washing
ton and Wyoming. We are now get
ting something like 10000, 900 tons Of
coal year out OF Indiana, Kentucky
and Illinois, and the great Appalach-
ian field produces more than four
times this aEiount. There is more
good burnable earth in the Appalach-