Coal Age

AUG 2012

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1940-1949 actual production of 682 million tons could have been even higher were it not for a nationwide shortage of rail cars that hit some mines as much as three and four days per week. On the labor front, there were work slow downs and grumbling after the UWMA lost in front of the Supreme Court and the restrictive Taft-Hartley Act passed Congress over President Truman's veto. There was also a week-long shutdown in April to honor and mourn the deaths of 111 miners in Centralia, Ill., that April. Following the explo- sion, Interior Secretary Krug closed 518 mines for emergency inspections and full production was slow to follow. But, by year's end, the nation's mines would extract more coal than ever before save for 1944, though 1,165 miners would perish that year. But 1947 was coal's last real high water mark until the 1970s. Just 1 million tons below 1944's record production level, oil, natural gas, railroad purchases of diesel locomotives, continued labor strikes and political wrangling would take their col- lective tolls on coal's markets. Through the late 1940s, Coal Age foretold of the coming "Coal Age of Tomorrow" and the many new possibilities the industry had to capture new markets by turning coal into oil or natural gas. All the while the indus- try lobbied to keep hydro and atomic ener- gy from being used to generate electricity, jousted with Lewis' UMWA, and stumbled ahead in the competitive race for fuel of the future. On the government-relations front, 1947 was also marked by the end—on June 30— of federal seizure of coal properties. This was timed with the legislative curtailment of most wartime government controls of the industry. Though mine inspections con- ducted by the Bureau and other activities would continue, gone were pricing controls and, it was hoped, the specter of govern- ment takeover or—worse—complete nationalization of the industry. Though the industry employed more than half a million people, what may have helped most to create the post-war tonnage record was the addition of more machines underground. That, coupled with the matu- ration of a number of high-production mines that went into service during the war plus relative labor peace showed what coal was capable of producing. A new record in tons per machine shift was set on September 25 that year at Mine 207, owned by Consol of Kentucky. Using a crawler loader serviced by two shuttle cars, and mining in a height of 60 in., a 14-man crew pulled out 1,466 tons in a 88 www.coalage.com single 8-hour shift. Rubber-tired haulage and the use of belt conveyors again racked up substantial gains in 1947. Another new loading record was set in June 1948 when a 19-man crew at Consol of West Virginia's Mine No. 63, Monongah, mined 1,536 tons in their shift. In setting this mark, the crew loaded out 35 cuts of 8½ ft Pittsburgh coal using three shuttle cars, one Joy 11BU loader and a Sullivan 10RU cutter. However, while the continued introduction of loading, haulage and other machines would help keep costs-per-ton lower, as the post-war economy evolved into a new nor- mal, industry was faced with the same prob- lem they had following World War I's rapid expansion: overcapacity. One major difference between the eras, however, was the political strength of the union movement. That difference was pointed up by John L. Lewis' audacious announcement at the UMWA '48 conven- tion that he would impose his own work- sharing plan on the industry if renewed price-cutting threatened employment and wage rates in the postwar future. "Existing division among coal operators, with their lack of qualified trusted leadership to cope with the industry's problems on a national basis, has forced the UMWA to be pre- pared to lead the way once again to stabi- lize the operation in the eventuality the declining market for coal softens to the point where a repetition of the cut-throat competition of the '20's and early '30s is threatening." Though industry responded with a no-so polite collective "no thanks," Coal Age's editors were quick to point out that Lewis' instincts about the industry may not be so far off. In a February 1949 piece, they looked at how much excess capacity existed at the time and what could be done by the industry to protect employees, customers and stockholders. "In 1947, production in the bitumi- nous industry was 624 million; capacity, 755 million. The spread increased in 1948 and included a substantial rise in new deep or strip-mine produc- tions high in quality...thus increasing pressure on lower quality coal producers…The resultant pressure on prices, accompanied by curtailment or closing of a number of opera- tions, undoubtedly precipitated the Lewis statement." But, the danger of overproduction was out there just the same, and already some of the more marginal, higher cost or least prepared operations were closing—even as some mines curtailed production from six to five days per week. By the end of 1948—"A pretty good year"—production was down slightly to a still robust 657 million tons. More than 70 new high production underground bitumi- nous mines opened that year along with 40 strip mines adding a combined additional 220,000 tons of daily production—the high- est rate of increase since before the war. But spring work stoppages growing out of the UMWA pension dispute, a drop off in exports from 43 million tons in 1947 to around 20 million tons that year and a 7.2% drop in railroad consumption accounted for the slight falloff in 1948. Though markets absorbed the still high output, production was about to go over a cliff in 1949 as Lewis made good on those threatened strikes. Fighting between union and management in turn curtailed output and raised prices and with America's economy modernizing rapidly, the railroads, the public and much of the nation's industry turned increasingly to the coal's more predictable competitors: natural gas and oil. By the time 1949 was over, all that could be done was survey the damage. Lamenting that "by all the signs, 1949 was to have been a good year for coal," but then "there was Mr. Lewis. He called his miners Power and its Reflection: John L. Lewis glares out over evidence of his power—coal cars made idle to choke his demands out of the Nation. *Coal Age, June 1946 100th Anniversary Special Issue August 2012

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