FOREWORD TO “THE ANTHRACITE COAL INDUSTRY”1 [1901]

The anthracite coal industry ranks as one of the most important in the United States, not so much on account of its magnitude as on account of its peculiar position in our industrial system, and the great number of social and economic questions which cluster around it. It is a limited natural monopoly. It is an extractive industry, the stock of which is exhausted as it is exploited. All the facts which can be learned about it are, therefore, as interesting to the investor as to the economist and geologist. The amount of supply, and the length of time before it will be exhausted, are matters of public welfare. Economizing of the supply and improvement of the methods of working, therefore, interest us all. The policy of management of the industry has turned upon a series of most interesting and important changes in labor supply, modes of transportation, aggregation of capital, and legislation. Therefore we have here a most instructive history for the statesman and man of affairs. The industry has also been the arena of many experiments in labor organization, and of many industrial wars over wages, hours, rules, methods, etc. It brings into co-operation a variety of interests, mining, transportation, banking; and the subdivision of interests is such that the industry, as a whole, is a cluster of interests which it is no easy Edition: current; Page: [388] matter to bring into harmony. The miners form a community which is to a certain extent isolated and peculiar. It is not easily acted upon by currents of thought which are strong in the rest of the state, and it is, at the same time, open to agitation and internal commotion and strife, or to temporary fits of feeling and irregular notions. Hence arise peculiar and important social phenomena in mining towns where laborers of different nationalities are assembled. The position of women and children, the relations of marriage and the family, the condition of churches and schools, all tend to become anomalous, and strange or hostile to our civilization.

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