• Evolution in Mining

  The story of coal after mining was first established in the Appalachians is one of changing machinery and markets. A machine that undercut the seam of coal before blasting, for example, began to take the place of the miner’s pick in the late thirties and greatly increased the amount of coal a man could produce; later, an automatic loader replaced the shovel.

  At the same time, the market and demand for coal rapidly changed. Whereas 28% of the nation’s coal production went to fuel railroad locomotives in the 1920s, the diesel engine had virtually replaced its coal-fired competitor by the end of the 1940s. World War II power demands caused coal production to reach an all time high of 630 million tons in 1947; by the early 1950s coal production and employment had sunk to Depression-era levels. Technological improvements in mining displaced thousands of workers.

  The United Mineworkers was a union that strongly encouraged working class unity across race and nationality. Black miners had been among the strongest supporters of unionization. But they disproportionately held the unskilled positions in the mines and when mechanization occurred they suffered the greatest lay-off rate.

  By the 1950s, oil and natural gas were making giant inroads in the fuels market, capturing much of the home heating market and competing with coal for the utilities market. Weak, and therefore vulnerable, the coal market would be revolutionized over the next decade. The strip miner would most benefit from the changing market conditions, for surface mining, which accounted for less than a fourth of total production in 1950, would produce almost 57% of all coal mined in the United States by the mid-1970s.

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