River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1902-12-25


SOME FOREIGN-BORN MINERS.
failed of success. In 1918 the coal
company gave a lease of ten years of
their lands to Messrs. Cist and Robin
son, conditioned that they should take
to market annually 10000 bushels of
coal to their own profit. Five arks
were dispatched. Three of them were
wrecked in the Lehigh, two reached
Philadelphia and the business was
abandoned. White and Hazard gave
$40 ton for that coal for their wire
mandatory, and yet it was not
enough to meet the costs of mining.
That attempt, however, led to fu-
ture reyults of permanent good for in
1917 White and Hazard, from the need
of such coal, were induced to visit the
Lehigh with George Kauts, and there
the three contracted with the coal
company on a lease for 20 years, on
condition that they should take 49,
600 tons of coal annually for their
own benefit.
In 1918 they procured a legislative
grant to improve the navigation of
the Lehigh-a measure deemed almost
chimerical by many. After some time
they procured a stock association and
went on from year to year expanding
and proving-taking, however, but
little coal to market until the year
1820-when they got to Philadelphia
365 tons 'as the first fruits of the con-
Germ" Little as that was, it COM
4
sold with difficulty. 1t increased each
subsequent year up to 1824-making
it that year delivery of 9,541 tons.
In 1925 it ran up to 28,393 tons, and
kept along at nearly that rate until
1882, when it delivered 10000 tons.
From that time it went on regularly
increasing. until 1889, when it had de-
livered 221 $50 tons. 'And now that
it has got it's momentum" wrote Wat
son, who can guess where it will
end?"
At the time of the HI torian's writ
ing no one would have had the audac-
ity to guess anywhere near the real
figures of the anthracite coal produc-
ton of Pennsylvania at the present
day. From the output of trife over
100000 tons in 1889 the industry grew
until, in 1901, the coal fields of the
counties of Carbon, Columbia, Dau-
phin, Lackawanna, Luzerne, North
cumberland, Schuyllxill and Susquehan-
ma, comprising the Schuylllill, Lehigh
and Wyoming regions, made ship
ments of anthracite coal amounting
to over 100000 tons.
For reasons inscrutable and incom-
Drehensible to man, the tremendous
furnaces of nature fused the limitless
copper supply and deposited it in
Arizona, where it is grudgingly to-
day yielding to mans demands. For
like unknowa bic reasons this great in
exhaustible anthracite deposit was
made and wedged into these noun
tains near tidewater. The deeper the
diggings, the heavier the blasts, the
greater the tonnage product, the wild
er and more ineXhaustible seem the
possibilities of this immensely of fuel.
With all of his best appliances man
could not expect to dispose of all of
the anthracite in a thousand years.
The Investigator says that this
long-despised fuel which now moves
all of the locomotives, trains, ships.
engines and machinery of continent,
provides also comfortable and happy
homes for more than half a million
people in the contiguous region.
Viewing the great coal field, study
ing the history of its development,
and mingling freely with the plain
people there, the investigator learned
| the lamentable fact that slime from
the dirty cess-pool of politics be-
smirched the region many months
| ago. Just as some of the powerful
nations of the old world sometimes
send secret emissaries to cause dis
sensions among weaker peoples, so
| the Investigator declares that polit-
! zeal agents invaded the homes where
| plenty dwelt in contentment, and
! planted discord. Such things would
| seem to be well-nigh incredible in this
| land of the free. SMITH D. FRY.