✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Coal Mining and Labor Conflict – Energy History

energyhistory.yale.edu · 2,634 words · saved by 1 readers

The rapidly increasing use of coal in the late nineteenth century required hundreds of thousands of workers to dig that coal out of the ground, sort and load it into railroad cars, and ship it to the urban and industrial centers that consumed it. Most coalfields were sparsely populated compared to the cities they supplied. Workers had to be recruited and lured to the coal camps. Company representatives traveled across the agricultural south, recruiting Black workers from former plantation areas as a new wave of white violence followed the collapse of Reconstruction. Recruiters also went to struggling towns in Southern and Eastern Europe, paying voyage fares for men who promised to work in the coal mines on arrival. By the turn of the twentieth century, close to half a million workers—mostly men and boys, but also some women in smaller, family mines—toiled in the American coalfields. The reality of the coal camp often looked very different from what had been promised. Pay was low, and t

Overview Library items Additional Reading Author Bio Timeline Overview Trish Kahle The rapidly increasing use of coal in the late nineteenth century required hundreds of thousands of workers to dig that coal out of the ground, sort and load it into railroad cars, and ship it to the urban and industrial centers that consumed it. Most coalfields were sparsely populated compared to the cities they supplied. Workers had to be recruited and lured to the coal camps. Company representatives traveled across the agricultural south, recruiting Black workers from former plantation areas as a new wave of

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading