Coal Age

AUG 2012

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1911-1919 to better things. Do your part—bear in mind that this journal each week will rep- resent the best efforts of a large corps of experienced engineers; study the matter presented and you will find at the year's end, the time consumed will be well employed." Parsons and Hill Publishing hoped to reach a wide audience throughout the entire coal industry. "This is not a paper for miners only, nor is it intended solely for men higher up; each individual can skip all that doesn't interest him, and still have plenty to occupy his time and thought…With your coopera- tion, we will be instrumental in putting the industry on a higher, safer footing…We will be around to see you and talk with you, time and time again; no plant worth visiting will be overlooked, and if you have anything to show, whether far or near, just send us word." Hill merged with McGraw in 1917. Despite the fact that coal production in the United States had nearly doubled in the decade since 1900 to more than 500 million tons or 40% of world production, coal's future was still being doubted. In a January 6, 1912, editorial Parson's wrote: "We've heard for years that our summers are get- ting hotter and our winters milder, but the mercury makes a new low record for some particular day each year; most every fort- night someone discovers that electricity will furnish all needed heat as well as power, but he forgets to tell us how he's going to gener- ate electricity without burning coal…still consumption increases, and it's safe to con- clude our children's children will be using more coal in their homes and factories than we ever dreamed could be mined. The pen- dulum is still swinging—a new year and likely a new era have dawned." since the end of the Civil War in 1865. By 1900, the U.S. was beginning to produce almost half of the world's total coal con- sumption. From 1906 to 1911, railroads rapidly opened up new coalfields in Virginia, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky as well as Illinois, Utah and Colorado. In Illinois and the Pittsburgh seam coalfields, mechanization and new technologies allowed deep mining to quickly advance. In just that half decade alone, more than 3.5 million U.S. coal miners increased pro- duction by over 40,788,000 tons—a nearly 10% jump. But in just those five years, almost 14,000 coal miners lost their lives and fatality rates were rising. The first issue of Coal Age, dated October 14, 1911. By 1909, the United States had already become the world's largest coal producer. Churning out more than 418 million tons, our mines were 35% greater in output than Great Britain's 268 million tons and second worldwide. Germany was a distant third at only 217 million tons. Though the U.S. was a production leader, its safety record lagged. The death rate per thousand per- sons employed was 3.35, over twice that of the U.K. This was certainly due in part to the meteoric rise of the U.S. coal industry In the January 18, 1913, issue, interna- tionally-acclaimed statistician for the Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Frederick Hoffman, published some of the first statistical information about mining fatalities. In an era when the new- ly created Federal Bureau of Mines was struggling to establish a methodology to accurately create and publish these vital figures, Hoffman complained that gath- ering such information was "a difficult and discouraging task." Having "first commenced the tabulation of coal mine fatalities in 1897 at the request of the late editor of the Engineering and Mining Journal, Richard P. Rothwell," Hoffman found that "some of the coal mine inspectors are indifferent to the requests made to them for information, and in other states the law prevents the publici- *Coal Age, January 16,1912 August 2012 100th Anniversary Special Issue www.coalage.com 33

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