A landscape of energy abundance: Anthracite coal canals and the roots of American fossil fuel dependence, 1820-1860

Environmental History

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 449-484

  Jones, Christopher F ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANTHRACITE; CANAL; ENERGY RESOURCE; ENERGY USE; FOSSIL FUEL; HISTORICAL RECORD; SOCIAL IMPACT; WATERWAY TRANSPORT;

UNITED STATES;

EID: 77957715465     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: 19308892     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/emq057     Document Type: Article

References (140)

1. Anthracite refers to coal that contains a particularly high percentage of carbon- usually more than 85 percent. Anthracite coal is relatively rare-most of the world's coal reserves are classified as bituminous, semi-bituminous, or lignite, each of which contains a decreasing percentage of carbon
2. Michael Knies, Coal on the Lehigh, 1790-1827: Beginnings and Growth of the Anthracite Industry in Carbon County, Pennsylvania (Easton, PA: Canal History and Technology Press, 2001), 13-14.
3. History of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, Published by Order of the Board of Managers (Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1840), 11.
4. More than a million tons of coal were shipped to Philadelphia each year after 1845, but much of this was transshipped to other ports. In 1860, Philadelphians likely consumed 1,134,00 tons of coal in addition to the amounts that were sent elsewhere. Richard G. Healey, The Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Industry, 1860-1902: Economic Cycles, Business Decision-Making and Regional Dynamics (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2007), 71.
5. E. A. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
6. The literature on anthracite coal is vast. Among the most important works are: Alfred Dupont Chandler, "Anthracite Coal and the Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the United States," Business History Review 46 (1972): 141-81;
7. Donald L. Miller and Richard E. Sharpless, The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)
8. Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht, The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005)
9. Clifton K. Yearley, Enterprise and Anthracite: Economics and Democracy in Schuylkill County, 1820-1875 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1961)
10. Frederick Moore Binder, Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and Its Utilization to 1860 (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974).
11. Works addressing the transport of anthracite coal include: Chester Lloyd Jones, The Economic History of the Anthracite-Tidewater Canals (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1908)
12. Anthony Brzyski, "The Lehigh Canal and Its Economic Impact on the Region through Which It Passed, 1818-1873" (PhD Dissertation, New York University, 1957)
13. Knies, Coal on the Lehigh
14. Ronald Filippelli, "The Schuylkill Navigation Company and Its Role in the Development of the Anthracite Coal Trade and Schuylkill County, 1815-1845" (MA Thesis, Penn State University, 1966).
15. William Cronon's analysis of commodity flows shaping the development of Chicago and the Great West is an important inspiration for my work: William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).
16. The most thorough treatment of this topic is Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change.
17. Other scholars have described systems similar to the organic economy using the language of a solar-agrarian regime (Sieferle), somatic energy regime (McNeill), or biological old regime (Marks): Robert Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002)
18. John McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World (New York: Norton, 2000)
19. Rolf Peter Sieferle, The Subterranean Forest: Energy Systems and the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: White Horse Press, 2001).
20. Other scholars using organic and mineral economies include: Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008)
21. Richard Wilkinson, "The English Industrial Revolution," in The Ends of the Earth, ed. Donald Worster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
22. John Landers, The Field and the Forge: Population, Production, and Power in the Pre-Industrial West (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)
23. Paul Warde, "Fear of Wood Shortage and the Reality of the Woodland in Europe, c. 1450-1850," History Workshop Journal 62 (2006)
24. Vaclav Smil, Energy in World History (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994).
25. My dissertation extends this analysis to the operations of oil pipelines and electricity transmission wires in the mid-Atlantic: Christopher F. Jones, "Energy Landscapes: Coal Canals, Oil Pipelines, and Electricity Transmission Wires in the Mid-Atlantic, 1820-1930" (PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2009).
26. My description of organic and mineral economies is drawn heavily from Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change
27. Sieferle, The Subterranean Forest.
28. In 1600, for example, PaulWarde estimates that wind and water power represented at most 1.5 percent of the total energy supply used by humans in England and Wales. Over 75 percent of the energy came from human muscles, animals, and firewood. Much of the remaining energy came from the isolated burning of coal in brewing and salt manufacturing. Paul Warde, Energy Consumption in England and Wales, 1560-2000 (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Istituto di Studi sulle Societa del Mediterraneo (ISSM), 2007), 60, 69.
29. Sieferle, The Subterranean Forest, 59.
30. Even canals, which were made by humans, not nature, usually followed the path of existing waterways.
31. Wrigley argues that Thomas Malthus's principle of population was a description of an organic economy. Malthus observed that an exponentially increasing population occupying a fixed quantity of land would lead to a diminishing quality of life because the limited number of goods would be split between more and more people. In essence, the pie was not going to get much bigger, but it would have to be divided into many more (and therefore much smaller and less satisfying) pieces. Adam Smith and David Ricardo largely agreed with Malthus in this regard: E. A. Wrigley, "The Limits to Growth: Malthus and the Classical Economists," Population and Development Review 14, Supplement: Population and Resources in Western Intellectual Traditions (1988).
32. The energy density of fossil fuels makes the development of transport infrastructure economically viable. Organic energy sources tend to be decentralized and lack the density necessary to justify extensive alterations of the built environment for their transport. Firewood is spread out over large forests in a relatively thin layer that would be less than four inches thick if distributed evenly. By contrast, coal seams are often found in deposits several feet thick with as many as 30 to 120 layers on top of one another. This means that the energy yield from a single place is at least 300 times (and often several thousand times) greater with coal than firewood. As a result, there is much greater incentive for capital investment in transport infrastructure with fossil fuels because the costs can be recouped through the high volume of traffic. Sieferle, The Subterranean Forest, 22.
33. Dublin and Licht, The Face of Decline, 11.
34. Most of the coal arriving from Britain could be sold cheaply because it was used as ballast by ships crossing the Atlantic. Coal from Virginia came from mines along the James River just north of Jamestown. As Sean Adams demonstrates, the slow development of the Virginia coalfields had much to do with the lack of investment in transport infrastructure in that state. Sean P. Adams, Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
35. Philadelphia's population during these years was 28,522 in 1790, 41,220 in 1800, and 53,722 in 1810 according to the Census. Coal import numbers from: Howard Benjamin Powell, Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis: Jacob Cist and the Developing Market for Pennsylvania Anthracite (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978), 9, 24-25.
36. Carbon percentage numbers from Adams, Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth, 15.
37. These parties drew on knowledge of how to use anthracite coal developed in the anthracite regions. As early as the 1770s, several craftsmen and farmers in Wilkes-Barre and the Wyoming Valley were using anthracite in a variety of applications. Dublin and Licht, The Face of Decline, 11.
38. In general, anthracite boosters favored policies supporting the economic growth of the manufacturing sector advocated by figures such as Alexander Hamilton and Tench Coxe in contrast to a Jeffersonian notion of a nation of rural independent farmers. Many anthracite boosters saw the various motivations as complementary. Josiah White, future developer of the Lehigh Canal, articulated both civic responsibility and personal profit as motivators for developing a project on the Schuylkill River in 1810: "If I succeeded, it would lead to a similar improvement in the interior of Pennsylvania which would be of great public good. While the water power & the Falls would make it a profitable investment to me & fully as well as to invest my capital elsewhere." Josiah White, Josiah White's History, Given by Himself (Philadelphia: Press of G.H. Buchanan Company, 1909), 12-13.
39. Thomas Cooper, "Statement on Coal" from early nineteenth century, as cited in Powell, Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis, 1.
40. Cooper T. Statement on coal. Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis Ibid. 1
41. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change, 56.
42. Powell, Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis, 24, 99.
43. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 (New York: Rinehart, 1951), 132-33.
44. For example, several Philadelphians founded The Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation in the State of Pennsylvania in 1789. In 1808, Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, presented an analysis of existing transport systems in the United States and advocated further developments. In 1824, Philadelphians established The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvement in the Commonwealth. United States. Department of the Treasury, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals (Philadelphia: William Duane, 1808).
45. Memorial of the Commissioners of the State of New York, in Behalf of Said State; Praying the Aid of the General Government in Opening a Communication between the Navigable Waters of Hudson River and the Lakes, (Washington, DC: Printed by William A. Davis, 1816), 8.
46. United States. Department of the Treasury, Report on Roads and Canals, 123.
47. Josiah White, "English Industry" The Democratic Press, March 20, 1821
48. as cited in Norris Hansell, Josiah White: Quaker Entrepreneur (Easton, PA: Canal History and Technology Press, 1992), 56.
49. Philadelphians had hoped to develop the Schuylkill and Lehigh rivers since the eighteenth century in order to promote trade throughout the state. William Penn had envisioned a canal connecting the Susquehanna and Schuylkill rivers and David Rittenhouse and Robert Morris led a failed attempt in 1791 to implement this plan. The Pennsylvania legislature passed at least seven acts authorizing the improvement of the Lehigh River before 1820, but none of these efforts succeeded (the years of these acts were 1771, 1791, 1784, 1798, 1810, 1814, and 1816). Filippelli, "Schuylkill Navigation Company", 3.
50. Knies, Coal on the Lehigh, 1790-1827, 13.
51. Knies, Coal on the Lehigh, 1790-1827, 37-8.
52. This success was remarkable because almost all canals built during the antebellum era cost far more money and took far more time than expected.
53. The term "bear-lock" apparently was the response workers liked to give to curious passersby who asked what they were building, an early form of trade secrecy.
54. The Delaware River was navigable most of the year, although it was later improved with a canal to allow heavier coal boats to travel to Philadelphia.
55. White, Josiah White's History, 58-59.
56. The capital structure of the company made shares available to farmers, even if they had moderate incomes. Each share cost $50 and a person could subscribe with a down payment of only $5. Jones, Economic History Anthracite Canals, 126, 29.
57. In the same year, less than 140,000 tons of other goods were shipped down the river and fewer than 60,000 tons of goods were shipped upriver. Ibid., 149-54.
58. Stephen Girard purchased large blocks of stock and also financed a mortgage so that a section of the canal between Reading and Hamburg could be completed. Miller and Sharpless, The Kingdom of Coal, 34.
59. Richard Richardson, Memoir of Josiah White. Showing His Connection with the Introduction and Use of Anthracite Coal and Iron, and the Construction of Some of the Canals and Railroads of Pennsylvania, Etc (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1873), 59.
60. Goods shipped on canals cost on average 1.5 to 3.3 cents per ton/mile around 1830, versus 17.4 to 18.8 cents overland. As coal was shipped in bulk, its costs were usually on the lower end of the spectrum. Diane Lindstrom, Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810-1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 113.
61. "Report of the Committee of the Senate of Pennsylvania Upon the Subject of the Coal Trade," (Harrisburg: Henry Welsh, 1834), 81.
62. R. C. Taylor, Statistics of Coal (Philadelphia: J. W. Moore, 1855), 396.
63. Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, Report of the Engineers of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, Who Were Appointed, on the Nineteenth Instant, a Committee on the Subject of an Expose of the Property of the Company (Philadelphia: S. W. Conrad, 1826), 5.
64. Powell, Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis, 24.
65. Taylor, Statistics of Coal, 405. Prices were typically $1 per ton higher in New York City and $2 per ton higher in Boston due to coastal shipping costs.
66. Jules Irwin Bogen, The Anthracite Railroads; a Study in American Railroad Enterprise (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1927).
67. "Report of the Committee of the Senate of Pennsylvania Upon the Subject of the Coal Trade," 31.
68. Dublin and Licht, The Face of Decline, 12.
69. The canals, and later railroads, were frequently upgraded to increase their capacity. For example, the Lehigh Canal was expanded in 1827-1829, 1837, and 1841. The Schuylkill Canal was expanded in 1840 and 1846. These expansions allowed the companies to increase the boat capacity from around fifty tons to nearly two hundred tons. Jones, Economic History Anthracite Canals.
70. Exposition," Miners' Journal, April 2, 1831.
71. Robert Roberts, The House Servant's Directory: Or a Monitor for Private Families⋯ (Boston: Munroe and Francis, 1827), 159-73. Italics in original text.
72. Priscilla J. Brewer, From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 64.
73. Marcus Bull, Experiments to Determine the Comparative Value of the Principal Varieties of Fuel Used in the United States, and Also in Europe and on the Ordinary Apparatus Used for Their Combustion (Philadelphia: Judah Dobson, 1827). Marcus Bull was a scientist who was also an officer of the North American Coal Company.
74. "Fuel Savings Society," Hazard's Register, August 20, 1831.
75. Knies, Coal on the Lehigh, 1790-1827, 52.
76. In 1830, the total sales of coal in Philadelphia amounted to $308,400 according to a report by the Pennsylvania Senate. As anthracite was retailing at an average of $6.50 per ton this year, there were approximately 47,500 tons of coal in the marketplace. Assuming about 20 percent of this to be imported bituminous coal, that leaves about 40,000 tons of anthracite. Contemporaries observed that at least as much anthracite was being used in industry as in homes, which gives an estimate of about 20,000 tons of coal used in home heating. The population of Philadelphia City and County in 1830 was 188,797. Since one ton of coal could last a person for the winter, this gives an adoption rate of roughly 10 percent: "Report of the Committee of the Senate of Pennsylvania Upon the Subject of the Coal Trade," 43.
77. Binder, Coal Age Empire, 17.
78. Brewer, From Fireplace to Cookstove, 98.
79. A Boston physician reported in 1868 that 99 out of 100 homes in that city were heated by anthracite, and it is fair to assume that a similar ratio held in Philadelphia by 1860, given that anthracite was both cheaper and more easily available in Philadelphia. George Derby, An Inquiry into the Influence Upon Health of Anthracite Coal When Used as Fuel for Warming Dwelling-Houses (Boston: A. Williams and Co., 1868), 6.
80. A typical household of six people required about eight cords of wood for heating and cooking purposes. A cord of wood was a stacked pile of wood four feet wide, eight feet long, and four feet high. For estimates of fuel consumption see "Fuel Savings Society"; "Anthracite Coal, Versus Wood," Hazard's Register, November 15, 1834;
81. Sean P. Adams, "Warming the Poor and Growing Consumers: Fuel Philanthropy in the Early Republic's Urban North," Journal of American History 95 (2008): 69-94.
82. Under good conditions in the nineteenth century, an acre of land could produce thirty cords of wood if clear-cut, and would take twenty years to regrow. With poor soil or indifferent forestry practices, the yield would likely be lower. Thus, an estimate of 1.5 cords of wood per acre, or two-thirds an acre for one cord of wood is a reasonable, if optimistic, estimate. Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 106.
83. In 1839, 84 percent of the 54,000 newly constructed houses were made out of wood. Ibid., 147.
84. New York City grew even faster during this period, with 942,292 people in 1870, 1,206,299 in 1880, and 1,515,301 in 1890.
85. Thomas Childs Cochran, Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 93.
86. Craig L. Bartholomew, Lance E. Metz, and Ann M. Bartholomew, The Anthracite Iron Industry of the Lehigh Valley (Easton, PA: Center for Canal History and Technology, 1988), 21-27.
87. The winner of Biddle's $5,000 prize was a man named William Lyman who hired Benjamin Perry from the Pentyweyn Iron Works in South Wales to run his forge. In addition, the Lehigh Crane Iron Company began operations under the leadership of David Thomas, who had worked under George Crane in Wales. Binder, Coal Age Empire, 65.
88. Bartholomew, Metz, and Bartholomew, The Anthracite Iron Industry of the Lehigh Valley, 52-53.
89. The same year there were 219,674 tons produced from nearly 300 charcoal forges, or an average of around 730 tons per furnace. C. G. Childs, The Coal and Iron Trade, Embracing Statistics of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: C. G. Childs, 1847), 23.
90. Philadelphia Convention of Iron Masters, Documents Relating to the Manufacture of Iron in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: 1850), 96.
91. Three points of data give credibility to the estimate of 65 percent. First, in 1847, there was a total production of 151,331 tons of pig iron, and the entire industry was reported to have consumed 483,000 tons of anthracite. If roughly 300,000 tons were used to produce the pig iron, that leaves about 180,000 tons used in secondary processing, or an additional 60 percent. Second, in 1855, total pig iron production was 381,866 tons. Assuming that about half of this was made in the Lehigh and Schuylkill valleys (190,000 tons) this would have required 380,000 tons of coal. Based on analysis of canal shipments, the regions consumed about 639,825 tons of coal in iron production, leaving a balance of 259,825 tons, or 68 percent more. Finally, in 1860, total pig iron production was 519,211 tons, with an estimated 260,000 produced in the Schuylkill and Lehigh regions. About 885,000 tons of coal were consumed in the region, which leaves a balance of about 365,000 tons of coal used in secondary iron operations or a ratio of 70 percent more than in pig iron production. Bartholomew, Metz, and Bartholomew, Anthracite Iron Industry, 52-53; Proceedings of the American Iron and Steel Association at Philadelphia, Nov. 20, 1873, 51
92. Daddow and Bannan, Coal, Iron, and Oil, 698
93. "Henry Clay in Philadelphia," Miners' Journal, August 10, 1850.
94. Childs, The Coal and Iron Trade, 24. Note: all antebellum statistical data must be read critically. The records are incomplete and often involved some amount of guesswork. The data presented in this paper has been gathered from several sources to provide as accurate an overall picture as possible.
95. Sieferle, The Subterranean Forest, 103.
96. Bartholomew, Metz, and Bartholomew, Anthracite Iron Industry, 6. Most iron plantations did not operate sustainably during this period. It was common to clear-cut the surrounding forest until one ran out of trees, and then move the furnace to a new site.
97. This was approximately 80 percent of the nation's total output of anthracite iron and 50 percent of the charcoal iron was being produced in Pennsylvania. Daddow and Bannan, Coal, Iron, and Oil.
98. Anthracite iron production in 1886 was 2,099,597 tons, with 459,557 tons of charcoal iron, and 3,806,174 tons of iron forged with bituminous and coke (Bartholomew, Metz, and Bartholomew, The Anthracite Iron Industry of the Lehigh Valley, 53).
99. Total production in the Lehigh Valley in 1864 was 214,093 tons of pig iron using 486,105 tons of anthracite. Ibid., 698. Area information from Lehigh Valley Convention and Visitor's Bureau Home Page: http://www.lehighvalleypa.org/ [accessed September 18, 2008].
100. Brzyski, "The Lehigh Canal and Its Economic Impact", 711-22.
101. "Anthracite Coal Trade of the United States," Hazard's Register, July 16, 1831.
102. Secretary of the Treasury, Report on Steam Engines (Washington, DC: Thomas Allen, Printer, 1838), 156-67, 379.
103. The total horsepower rating of these engines was 1860: Secretary of the Treasury, Report on Steam Engines, 156-67, 379.
104. Atack et al. estimate the fuel efficiency of steam engines in the 1830s as 7.5 pounds of coal per horsepower hour. Jeremy Atack, Fred Bateman, and Thomas Weiss, "The Regional Diffusion and Adoption of the Steam Engine in American Manufacturing," Journal of Economic History 40 (1980): 295. Assuming the engines were operated 12 hours a day 6 days a week, the total consumption is estimated to be 25,863 tons.
105. Philadelphia Committee on United States Census 1870, Manufactures of the City of Philadelphia. Census of 1870 (Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1872), 27.
106. By the 1890s, Atack, Bateman, and Weiss argue fuel consumption of steam engines had declined to two pounds per horsepower-hour. In 1870, it was likely around 3 pounds. If the engines operated twelve hours a day, six days a week, the fuel consumption would be 278,969 tons (6 × 12 × 52 × (3/2000) × 49,674). Atack, Bateman, and Weiss, "Regional Diffusion of Steam Engines," 295.
107. The concentration of textile mills along falling water in the Carolina Piedmont followed a similar logic.
108. Oliver Evans, The Abortion of the Young Steam Engineer's Guide (Philadelphia: Printed by Fry and Kammerer, 1805).
109. The historical geographer D. W. Meinig notes that despite the persistent popular mythology of the small New England mill town tucked into nature, by the midnineteenth century "the dominant patterns of industrializing⋯ America would come to resemble⋯Pennsylvania much more than the model mill towns of New England." D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), vol. 2, Continental America, 1800-67, 397.
110. 1840 data from Eighth Annual Report Made by the Board of Trade to the Coal Mining Association of Schuylkill County, (Pottsville, PA: Benjamin Bannan, 1840)
111. 1850 data from "Steam Engines in This Region," Miners' Journal, January 5, 1850, 4.
112. 1865 data from Daddow and Bannan, Coal, Iron, and Oil, 726.
113. To illustrate this, a report on the North American Coal Company's fifteen horsepower steam engine in 1834 noted that it burned two tons of coal operating five hours a day. This implies that the engine was consuming fuel at the astounding rate of fifty-three pounds per horsepower-hour. Given that this was one of the first engines in mining operations, I assume that the efficiency improved over time. "Anthracite for Steam Engines," Hazard's Register, August 30, 1834.
114. In 1850, the 165 steam engines in the Schuylkill region had a total horsepower of 4,753. Assuming the engines were operated 16 hours a day, 6 days a week and had an efficiency rating of 8 pounds of coal per hour, the total consumption in the Schuylkill region would be about 95,000 tons (94,908 = [4,992 hours multiplied by 4,753 horsepower equals 23,726,976 horsepower hours multiplied by 8/2000]). Other anthracite regions produced 48 percent of the total output this year, although the other regions were mined by larger organizations needing fewer steam engines. Assuming that there were a third fewer steam engines per total production, this implies an additional coal consumption of about 60,000 tons for a total of 155,000 tons (58,754 = 95,000 multiplied by 48/52 multiplied by .67). In 1865, the data is more straightforward. There were 792 steam engines in the entire industry rated at 41,453 horsepower. With estimated consumption of 7 pounds of coal per horsepower-hour, this suggests total consumption of 725,000 tons (724,267 = 4,992 hours multiplied by 41,453 horsepower multiplied by 7/2000). "Steam Engines in This Region."
115. Daddow and Bannan, Coal, Iron, and Oil.
116. "Pine Lands of New Jersey," Hazard's Register, July 25, 1829.
117. In 1828, it was reported that the NYC fleet of steamers consumed 200,000 cords of pine per year and that Philadelphia's fleet used an additional 150,000 cords: Binder, Coal Age Empire, 91.
118. In 1831, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was operating a steam vessel, The Pennsylvania, to haul coal barges up and down the Delaware River. During the 1830s, the Delaware & Hudson company gave free anthracite to companies experimenting with anthracite boilers, absorbed the costs of converting fireboxes and grates in New York City ferries, and supported efforts by entrepreneurs to develop marine boilers that would be fueled by anthracite. Binder, Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and Its Utilization to 1860, 90-93.
119. Thirteenth Annual Report, Made by the Board of Trade, to the Coal Mining Association of Schuylkill County, (Pottsville: Benjamin Bannan, 1845), 8-9.
120. LeBow's Review, as cited in Binder, Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and Its Utilization to 1860, 104-05.
121. Binder, Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and Its Utilization to 1860 Ibid., 111.
122. "Coke and Anthracite for Locomotives," Miners' Journal, May 25, 1850.
123. By 1854, the Reading had successfully converted 85 percent of their engines to use anthracite for fuel. G. A. Nicolls, "Anthracite Coal in Locomotives," Miners' Journal, January 27, 1855.
124. "Anthracite Coal," Hazard's Register, December 24, 1831.
125. Firewood consistently sold at prices that were higher than anthracite coal per heating value. In 1815, Jacob Cist noted that the average winter price of cordwood in Philadelphia was $7.00 per cord. In 1835, the Fuel Savings Society was selling wood at a discount cost of $4.40 per cord, which was considered half of the market price, to Philadelphia's poor (Sean P. Adams, "Warming the Poor and Growing Consumers," 80-81). Moreover, we can get a better sense of the change in average price if we track the markets for coal and lumber. If we assume that firewood prices followed the general trajectory of the lumber market, then we get clear evidence that coal steadily became more cost-competitive than firewood. Between 1820 and 1860, the indexed price of coal fell dramatically, from an index price of 100 to 42, a nearly 60 percent fall. Lumber markets, by contrast, fell only 10 percent during the same time period. White pine went from an index price of 91 to 81 and wooden staves for barrels went from 120 to 109. As the price of anthracite in 1820 ($8.20 per ton) was set to be competitive with other heating materials, over the course of the antebellum period coal gained a steady comparative advantage as its relative price to consumers fell much faster than wood (Anne Bezanson, Robert Davis Gray, and Miriam Hussey, Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia, 1784-1861 [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936], 2:37, 167, 212).
126. Lindstrom, Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810-1850, 48, footnote 101.
127. Nationally, more than five times asmuch firewood was used in comparison with coal in 1860 (2,641 trillion BTUs from fuel wood versus 516 trillion BTUs from coal, the majority (279) of which came from anthracite). Schurr and Netschert, Energy in the American Economy, 1850-1975: An Economic Study of Its Historyand Prospects, 495-96.
128. In 1870, waterpower provided 75 percent of New England's power supply versus 25 percent for steam. David E. Nye, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 82.
129. Other seaboard cities including Boston, Baltimore, Providence, and New Haven also experienced some of the changes characteristic of a mineral economy during this period when coal was shipped along the Atlantic seaboard from Philadelphia and New York.
130. Miller and Sharpless, The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields, 46-50
131. Yearley, Enterprise and Anthracite: Economics and Democracy in Schuylkill County, 1820-1875, 31.
132. Lehigh data from Annual Reports of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company and Jones, The Economic History of the Anthracite-Tidewater Canals, 112.
133. Schuylkill data from Miners' Journal, Coal Statistical Register for 1870.
134. Lindstrom, Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810-1850, ch. 6.
135. Miller and Sharpless, The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields, xxi.
136. AnthonyWallace, "The Perception of Risk in Nineteenth Century Anthracite Mining Operations," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 127 (1983): 99.
137. There were further distinctions between the distribution of benefits within cities and within the anthracite regions, which I do not have sufficient space to address in depth here. Clearly, the benefits of bringing coal to the surface benefited factory owners to a greater extent than workers, and mine owners profited more than miners. However, other judgments are more mixed. Fuel made up a greater percentage of the family budget for working families as opposed to the wealthy, so the relative cheapness of anthracite may have benefited laborers more than those with greater financial resources. Even though mining was dangerous work, it was attractive enough as a profession to draw tens of thousands of workers looking for a better life. Whether anthracite made their lives better or worse is not a question with a single answer.
138. Thomas Parke Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
139. Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), ch. 4.
140. David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).