COAL - Clpdigital.org

Pennsylvania and covers the whole area of Penn­
sylvania, Eastern Ohio, a large portion of Vir­
ginia, West Virginia. Eastern Kentucky, passes
southward through Eastern Tennessee, North­
western Georgia, and ends in middle Alabama,
having an area of 50,000 square miles. This em­
braces the Pittsburgh district and is the most im­
portant eoal field in the world.
Prior to 1885, many coal mines were worked in
a very crude manner. Mine foremen were not
then as well educated as they are to-day, nor as
well posted in the management of coal properties.
Mines that produced 300 tons per day were the
exception and not the rule. But wonderful pro­
gress has been made during the past few years.
Our largest local independent manufacturing com­
pany has expended more than a million dollars in
the equipment of a single mine, which has recently
produced in excess of 7.000 tons of coal in one day
of eight hours, for their own exclusive use, and
the maximum has not yet been reached, their
business having increased more than five times
within the last 15 years.
About 25 years ago when the use of natural
gas was at its height in this district, many of our
manufacturers and coal men were of the opinion
that the mining of coal was becoming a lost art,
but within a few years the large mills were com­
pelled to resume the use of coai, and to-day the
Pittsburgh district produces more coal than any
state in the Union, or any nation of the world
except Great Britain, Germany. Austria and
France. Judging the future by the past, the pro­
duction of the Pittsburgh district during the next
25 years will exceed 2,000,000.000 tons, or double
the output of the entire world during the present
year.
I can see in my mind's eye a greater Pittsburgh,
extending far beyond the borders of to-day's prescribed
limits, with vastly improved transporta­
tion facilities, a great network of railroads stretching
out in every direction like the spokes of a
wheel. I can see the improvement of the Monon­
gahela, Allegheny and Ohio rivers to the state
line, and the margins of these rivers and rail­
roads lined with a thousand factories employing
hundreds of thousands of happy workmen, a pros­
perous coal-consuming territory, with the present
Pittsburgh as its center, or hub. I can see the
Ohio river with a nine-foot stage of water from
Pittsburgh 1.000 miles to Cairo, connecting with
the great Mississippi and continuing southwest to
tide-water at the Gulf of Mexico.
I can see the new water-way—the Lake Erie
and Ohio River Ship Canal—stretching to the
north, connecting the great valley with the lake-.
and with the tide-water through the Canadian
canal and St. Lawrence river, and also through
the Erie and Hudson canal, with tide-water at
THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN. 39
New York; these improvements mai