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1920-1929 Cleaning coal at the Orient mine.*Coal Age, August 31, 1922 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 mechaniza- tion greater than in the coalfields of south- ern Illinois' Franklin County where, in the " 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 produc- tion, 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." *Coal Age, August 31, 1922 airshaft and its material shaft…The 8-ton skips in the main shaft are loaded at the bottom of the big hopper, where an opera- tor 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 fever- ish 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." 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. 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 publi- cized 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 fig- ured 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 54 www.coalage.com Though much of the original equip- ment 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 under- ground—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 passage- way for material alone—was sunk in 1920 about 100 yards form the main shaft. Thus the mine has its skipway, its man hoist, its 100th Anniversary Special Issue 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 sur- face plants prepared," the editors distin- guished the bituminous and anthracite fields as inherently different places to oper- ate. 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 concen- tration not only in regard to time but in regard to facilities of operation." August 2012 "