Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1916-05-02

Nv operators have adjusted their differ
ences at the time this is written and the work
of the great anthracite mines is going forward as
usual The strike called attention for
moment to one of the remarkable sections of
American industrial life For the mining of anthra-
coal is al-American story which had its be-
ginning back days when the farmers of schuyl-
kill discovered that the black rock would burn and
which has grown great with the nation
A hundred and forty years one knew of
the existence coal But long before that
time eastern Pennsylvania was comparatively popuous
and sturdy titled the lands in the valleys of
the schuylkl and the Wyoming The farm lands
were not best and there many outcroppings
of the hard black rock that interferred with their
blowing
1t was just before the revolution that hunter was
lost one night a chilly mountain side near the
SchuylkilI built fire beneath stump and dozed
off When lie awoke in the morning he found that
the stump had burned away but to his surprise. the
broken ledge black rock just above it had been
transformed into glowing bed of Goals. The rock
in fact, had caught fire and was burning.
The hunter carried the story of the burning rock
to Obediah Core a blacksmith of Wilkes-Barre, and
Obedah put the black rock in his pasture INTO
his forge and burned 1t was half generation later
that Judge Jesse FeIs, of wiIkes-Barre, used this
black fuel in the manufacture of nails 1t was
another half a generation before local enthusiasts
foated two barge loads of this rock coal down to Phil
adephia offered it for sale 1t was tried by sew
era without and finally broken up
and used for travelling garden walks
It was less than a century ago that pioneers
in the anthracite region built CRATE that made it
sible sufficient draft beneath this hard coal to
make it burn. This the forerunner of all those
hundreds thousands of furnaces that burn only
thracite coal the thing that built industry
which is invested billion dollars, which yields
hundred million year. and which produces tfeiShts
for railroads amounting to half that sum annually
II is upon this rock that burns this coal great
hlilt hat rEabl
nifty which supports such towns Scranton Wilkes
Barre Carbonate, Hazleton, Pottsville and dozen
others. All of these towns are pitched in little valley
which, roughly speaking is five miles wide and sixty
five Tonga valley which probably produces more
wealth than any other similar area in the world
All the anthracite coal the world is in this little
valley During all the when the geologic forces
of the past working fashion the world of the
present there apparently but spot where con-
such to form this black rock that burns
farfung but anthracite exists here only in
marketable quantities.
Beneath the floor this valley there from eight
TO twelve layers of coal, from two TO twenty feet
thick running down nearly 1000 feet On the sur
are fields rickng streams, thrifty villages
Beneath them all tier after tier of mining opera
lions, of thousands of miners working at differ
ent depths, of shafts and tunnels of railroad
systems, of drainage operations or arthclal ventla
ton-teeming ant hills of human industry that do not
appear at the surface
Once every mile or a huge sheet iron building
raises it's head might be big grain elevator ten
stories high In reality it breaker. Near it is
shaft that leads deep the earth and from which
tunnels run directions at all levels on which there
is coal Up this mastershaft the coal from all levels
for a mile is sucked A huge belt carries it to the
very top of the There the great chunks Of
black rock are smashed into disable sizes The coal
down over through chutes in order
to sft rock clean grade and assemble the mar
ketabe product. Twelve railroad systems have
been built the product of these mines might be
hauled to market
It is a remarkable community that has been built
ND about these The descendants of the fam
lilies who lived modest farmer folk before the
coal days have mostly grown wealthy by selling to
the mining companies the right to what lies far be
meath the of their lands The tentacles of the
shafts by the breakers have reached forth and,
dozen levels have removed the coal The surface has
been undsturbed and the original owners or their sue
cessors still dwell quietly their ancestral farms
But the complexion of the population greatly
changed from the original mixture of English and
Dutch First the Irish and Welsh came into the coal
fields and worked these mines A generation they
began be displaced by Iungarians Russians, Slavs
and Italians. These have come and are still coming
by of thousands Many of the workers here have
been but time in America. About the mouth
of each mine posted Safety First" signs in which
II is necessary that the warning
twenty languages. The round and globular dome of
the Russian church is everywhere to be The
Greek church occupies a pinnacle here and there.
There touches of many races The anthracite re-
gons Babels of languages and as cosmopolitan
And all these peoples prosperous beyond the
widest dreams their European peasant imagnings.
sow-witted. cow-like Savs the parents of quick
br chit American boys that astonsh him who attempts
to understand the racial influence of the land The
sons Polish miners the practicng attorneys in
the courts of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. There is
plenty in miners and the public schools
remove the hyphens.
There is not better kept community in the nation