List of books about coal mining

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Books and some articles relating to coal mining, especially historical.

Contents

Current conditions

Fiction and poetry

Coal mining history

Britain

Bibliographic guides

Histories and manuals

  • Ashton, T. S. & Sykes, J. The coal industry of the eighteenth century. 1929.
  • Baylies, Carolyn. The History of the Yorkshire Miners, 1881–1918 Routledge (1993).
  • Benson, John. "Coalmining" in Chris Wrigley, ed. A History of British industrial relations, 1875–1914 (Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1982), pp 187–208.
  • Benson, John. British Coal-Miners in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History Holmes & Meier, (1980).
  • Buxton, N.K. The economic development of the British coal industry: from Industrial Revolution to the present day. 1979.
  • Coombes, B. L. These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales (1939).
  • Dron, Robert W. The economics of coal mining (1928).
  • Fine, B. The Coal Question: Political Economy and Industrial Change from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day (1990).
  • Galloway, R.L. Annals of coal mining and the coal trade. First series [to 1835] 1898; Second series. [1835–80] 1904. Reprinted 1971
  • Galloway, Robert L. A History Of Coal Mining In Great Britain (1882) Online at Open Library
  • Griffin, A. R. The British coalmining industry: retrospect and prospect. 1977.
  • Hanley, James. Grey Children: A Study in Humbug and Misery. 1937.
  • Hatcher, John, et al. The History of the British Coal Industry (5 vol, Oxford U.P., 1984–87); 3000 pages of scholarly history
    • John Hatcher: The History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 1: Before 1700: Towards the Age of Coal (1993).
    • Michael W. Flinn, and David Stoker. History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 2. 1700–1830: The Industrial Revolution (1984).
    • Roy Church, Alan Hall and John Kanefsky. History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 3: Victorian Pre-Eminence
    • Barry Supple. The History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 4: 1913–1946: The Political Economy of Decline (1988) excerpt and ISBN   019828294X.
    • William Ashworth and Mark Pegg. History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 5: 1946–1982: The Nationalized Industry (1986)
  • Heinemann, Margot. Britain's coal: A study of the mining crisis (1944).
  • Hill, Alan. Coal: A Chronology for Britain. Northern Mine Research Society.
  • Hull, Edward (1861). The coal-fields of Great Britain: their history, structure, and resources. London: 1861: Stanford.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  • Hughes. Herbert W, A Text-Book of Mining: For the use of colliery managers and others (London, many editions 1892–1917), the standard British textbook for its era.
  • Hull, Edward. Our coal resources at the close of the nineteenth century (1897) Online at Open Library. Stress on geology.
  • Jaffe, James Alan. The Struggle for Market Power: Industrial Relations in the British Coal Industry, 1800–1840 (2003).
  • Jevons, H.S. The British coal trade. 1920, reprinted 1969
  • Jevons, W. Stanley. The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines (1865).
  • Kirby, M.W. The British coalmining industry, 1870–1946: a political and economic history. 1977.
  • Lucas, Arthur F. "A British Experiment in the Control of Competition: The Coal Mines Act of 1930." Quarterly Journal of Economics (1934): 418–441. in JSTOR
    • Prest, Wilfred. "The British Coal Mines Act of 1930, Another Interpretation." Quarterly Journal of Economics (1936): 313–332. in JSTOR
  • Lewis, B. Coal mining in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (Longman, 1971).
  • McIvor, Arthur and Ronald Johnston. Miners' Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining 2007) ISBN   978-0-7546-3673-1
  • Nef, J. U. Rise of the British coal industry. 2v 1932, a comprehensive scholarly survey
  • Orwell, George. "Down the Mine" ( The Road to Wigan Pier chapter 2, 1937) full text
  • Rowe, J.W.F. Wages In the coal industry (1923).
  • Tonge, James. The principles and practice of coal mining (1906)
  • Waller, Robert. The Dukeries Transformed: A history of the development of the Dukeries coal field after 1920 (Oxford U.P., 1983) on the Dukeries
  • Williams, Chris. Capitalism, community and conflict: The south Wales coalfield, 1898–1947 (U of Wales Press, 1998).

United States

Industry

  • Adams, Sean Patrick, . "The US Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century." EH.Net Encyclopedia, August 15, 2001 scholarly overview
  • Adams, Sean Patrick. "Promotion, Competition, Captivity: The Political Economy of Coal," Journal of Policy History (2006) 18#1 pp 74–95 online
  • Adams, Sean Patrick. Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
  • Binder, Frederick Moore. Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and Its Utilization to 1860. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974.
  • Chandler, Alfred. "Anthracite Coal and the Beginnings of the 'Industrial Revolution' in the United States", Business History Review 46 (1972): 141–181. in JSTOR
  • Davies, Edward J., II. The Anthracite Aristocracy: Leadership and Social Change in the Hard Coal Regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1800–1930 (1985).
  • DiCiccio, Carmen. Coal and Coke in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1996
  • Conley, Phil. History of West Virginia Coal Industry (Charleston: Education Foundation, 1960)
  • Eavenson, Howard. The First Century and a Quarter of the American Coal Industry 1942.
  • Verla R. Flores and A. Dudley Gardner. Forgotten Frontier: A History of Wyoming Coal Mining (1989)
  • Goodell, Jeff. Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future (2006) ISBN   978-0-618-87224-4
  • Hudson Coal Company. The Story of Anthracite (New York, 1932), 425pp; Useful overview of the industry in the 20th century; fair-minded with an operators perspective
  • Lauver, Fred J. "A Walk Through the Rise and Fall of Anthracite Might", Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine 27#1 (2001) online edition
  • Long, Priscilla. Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry . Paragon, 1989.
  • Nelson, Robert H. The Making of Federal Coal Policy (1983)
  • Netschert, Bruce C. and Sam H. Schurr, Energy in the American Economy, 1850–1975: An Economic Study of Its History and Prospects. (1960)
  • Parker, Glen Lawhon. The Coal Industry: A Study in Social Control (Washington: American Council on Public Affairs, 1940)
  • Powell, H. Benjamin. Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis. Jacob Cist and the Developing Market for Pennsylvania Anthracite. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978.
  • Rottenberg, Dan. In the Kingdom of Coal: An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2003), owners' perspective
  • Shnayerson, Michael. Coal River: How a Few Brave Americans Took on a Powerful Company–and the Federal Government–to Save the Land They Love (2008)
  • Schurr, Sam H., and Bruce C. Netschert. Energy in the American Economy, 1850–1975: An Economic Study of Its History and Prospects. Johns Hopkins Press, 1960.
  • Veenstra, Theodore A., and Wilbert G. Fritz. "Major Economic Tendencies in the Bituminous Coal Industry," Quarterly Journal of Economics 51#1 (1936) pp. 106–130 in JSTOR
  • Vietor, Richard H. K. and Martin V. Melosi; Environmental Politics and the Coal Coalition Texas A&M University Press, 1980
  • Warren, Kenneth. Triumphant Capitalism: Henry Clay Frick and the Industrial Transformation of America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.

Primary sources

  • United States Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Report to the President on the Anthracite Coal Strike of May–October, 1902 By United States Anthracite Coal Strike (1903) online edition
  • Report of the United states coal commission.... (5 vol in 3; 1925) Official US government investigation of the 1922 anthracite strike. online vol 1–2
    • Tryon, Frederick Gale, and Joseph Henry Willits, eds. What the Coal Commission Found: An Authoritative Summary by the Staff (1925).
    • General policies committee of anthracite operators. The anthracite coal strike of 1922: A statement of its causes and underlying purposes (1923); Official statement by the operators. online

Coal miners and unions

  • Arnold, Andrew B. Fueling the Gilded Age: Railroads, Miners, and Disorder in Pennsylvania Coal Country (2014)
  • Aurand, Harold W. Coalcracker Culture: Work and Values in Pennsylvania Anthracite, 1835–1935 (2003).
  • Baratz, Morton S. The Union and the Coal Industry (Yale University Press, 1955)
  • Blatz, Perry. Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875–1925. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994.
  • Coal Mines Administration, U.S, Department Of The Interior. A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1947.
  • Corbin, David Alan Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922 (1981)
  • Dix, Keith. What's a Coal Miner to Do? The Mechanization of Coal Mining (1988), changes in the coal industry prior to 1940
  • Dubofsky, Melvyn and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (1977), leader of Mine Workers union, 1920–1960
  • Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930 1982.
  • Price V. Fishback. Soft Coal, Hard Choices: The Economic Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890–1930 (1992)
  • Grossman, Jonathan. "The Coal Strike of 1902 – Turning Point in U.S. Policy" Monthly Labor Review October 1975. online
  • Harvey, Katherine. The Best Dressed Miners: Life and Labor in the Maryland Coal Region, 1835–1910. Cornell University Press, 1993.
  • Hinrichs; A. F. The United Mine Workers of America, and the Non-Union Coal Fields Columbia University, 1923.
  • Lantz; Herman R. People of Coal Town Columbia University Press, 1958; on southern Illinois.
  • Laslett, John H.M. ed. The United Mine Workers: A Model of Industrial Solidarity? Penn State University Press, 1996.
  • Lewis, Ronald L. Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict. University Press of Kentucky, 1987.
  • Lunt, Richard D. Law and Order vs. the Miners: West Virginia, 1907–1933 Archon Books, 1979, On labor conflicts of the early 20th century.
  • Lynch, Edward A. and David J. McDonald. Coal and Unionism: A History of the American Coal Miners' Unions (1939)
  • McIntosh, Robert. Boys in the pits: Child labour in coal mines (McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP, 2000), Canadian mines
  • Phelan, Craig. Divided Loyalties: The Public and Private Life of Labor Leader John Mitchell (1994)
  • Rössel, Jörg. "Industrial Structure, Union Strategy and Strike Activity in Bituminous Coal Mining, 1881–1894", Social Science History (2002) 16#1 pp 1–32.
  • Seltzer, Curtis. Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American Coal Industry University Press of Kentucky, 1985, conflict in the coal industry to the 1980s.
  • Smith, Richard C. Human Crisis in the Kingdom of Coal Friendship Press, 1952, covers the plight of the coal worker in European and American coal centers.
  • Trotter Jr., Joe William. Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–32 (1990)
  • U.S. Immigration Commission, Report on Immigrants in Industries, Part I: Bituminous Coal Mining, 2 vols. Senate Document no. 633, 61st Cong., 2nd sess. (1911)
  • Wallace, Anthony F.C. St. Clair. A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry. Knopf, 1981.
  • Ward, Robert D. and William W. Rogers, Labor Revolt in Alabama: The Great Strike of 1894 University of Alabama Press, 1965 online the coal strike

China

Europe

Other

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthracite</span> Hard, compact variety of coal

Anthracite, also known as hard coal and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic lustre. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the highest ranking of coals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coal mining</span> Process of getting coal out of the ground

Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures are referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John L. Lewis</span> American miner and labor leader (1880–1969)

John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, thus keeping his promise of resignation if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1940 election against Wendell Willkie, Lewis took the United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Mine Workers of America</span> North American labor union

The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Union of Mineworkers (Great Britain)</span> British coal mining trade union

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is a trade union for coal miners in Great Britain, formed in 1945 from the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). The NUM took part in three national miners' strikes, in 1972, 1974 and 1984–85. Following the 1984–85 strike, and the subsequent closure of most of Britain's coal mines, it became a much smaller union. It had around 170,000 members when Arthur Scargill became leader in 1981, a figure which had fallen in 2023 to an active membership of 82.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coal Region</span> Pennsylvania region

The Coal Region is a region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is known for being home to the largest known deposits of anthracite coal in the world with an estimated reserve of seven billion short tons.

The History of coal mining goes back thousands of years, with early mines documented in ancient China, the Roman Empire and other early historical economies. It became important in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was primarily used to power steam engines, heat buildings and generate electricity. Coal mining continues as an important economic activity today, but has begun to decline due to the strong contribution coal plays in global warming and environmental issues, which result in decreasing demand and in some geographies, peak coal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthracite coal strike of 1902</span> Pennsylvanian Coal Strike

The Coal strike of 1902 was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners struck for higher wages, shorter workdays, and the recognition of their union. The strike threatened to shut down the winter fuel supply to major American cities. At that time, residences were typically heated with anthracite or "hard" coal, which produces higher heat value and less smoke than "soft" or bituminous coal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lattimer massacre</span> 1897 killing of striking miners by police in Pennsylvania

The Lattimer massacre was the killing of at least 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite miners by a Luzerne County sheriff's posse at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897. The miners were mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicities. Scores more miners were wounded in the attack by the posse. The massacre was a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Wales Coalfield</span> Region of Wales rich in coal deposits

The South Wales Coalfield extends across Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen. It is rich in coal deposits, especially in the South Wales Valleys.

The bituminous coal miners' strike was an unsuccessful national eight-week strike by miners of bituminous coal in the United States, which began on April 21, 1894.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Breaker boy</span> Type of coal-mining worker

A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United States and United Kingdom whose job was to separate impurities from coal by hand in a coal breaker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of coal mining in the United States</span>

The history of coal mining in the United States starts with the first commercial use in 1701, within the Manakin-Sabot area of Richmond, Virginia. Coal was the dominant power source in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and although in rapid decline it remains a significant source of energy in 2024.

George Korson was a folklorist, journalist, and historian. He has been cited as a pioneer collector of industrial folklore, and according to Michael Taft of the Library of Congress, "may very well be considered the father of occupational folklore studies in the United States." In addition to writing and editing a number of influential books, he also issued his field recordings of coal miners on two LP records for the Library of Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avondale Mine disaster</span>

The Avondale Mine disaster was a massive fire at the Avondale Colliery near Plymouth Township, Pennsylvania, on September 6, 1869. It caused the death of 110 workers. It started when the wooden lining of the mine shaft caught fire and ignited the coal breaker built directly overhead. The shaft was the only entrance and exit to the mine, and the fire trapped and suffocated 108 of the workers. It was the greatest mine disaster to that point in American history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coal mining in the United Kingdom</span> Fossil fuel from underground

Coal mining in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times and occurred in many different parts of the country. Britain's coalfields are associated with Northumberland and Durham, North and South Wales, Yorkshire, the Scottish Central Belt, Lancashire, Cumbria, the East and West Midlands and Kent. After 1972, coal mining quickly collapsed and had practically disappeared by the 21st century. The consumption of coal—mostly for electricity—fell from 157 million tonnes in 1970 to just 587,000 tonnes in 2023. Employment in coal mines fell from a peak of 1,191,000 in 1920 to 695,000 in 1956, 247,000 in 1976, 44,000 in 1993, 2,000 in 2015, and to 360 in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of coal miners</span>

People have worked as coal miners for centuries, but they became increasingly important during the Industrial Revolution when coal was burnt on a large scale to fuel stationary and locomotive engines and heat buildings. Owing to coal's strategic role as a primary fuel, coal miners have figured strongly in labor and political movements since that time.

The 1927 Indiana bituminous strike was a strike by members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against local bituminous coal companies. Although the struggle raged throughout most of the nation's coal fields, its most serious impact was in western Pennsylvania, including Indiana County. The strike began on April 1, 1927, when almost 200,000 coal miners struck the coal mining companies operating in the Central Competitive Field, after the two sides could not reach an agreement on pay rates. The UMWA was attempting to retain pay raises gained in the contracts it had negotiated in 1922 and 1924, while management, stating that it was under economic pressure from competition with the West Virginia coal mines, was seeking wage reductions. The strike proved to be a disaster for the union, as by 1929, there were only 84,000 paying members of the union, down from 400,000 which belonged to the union in 1920.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of anthracite coal mining in Pennsylvania</span>

There are two types of coal found in Pennsylvania: anthracite, the hard coal found in Northeastern Pennsylvania below the Allegheny Ridge southwest to Harrisburg, and bituminous, the soft coal found west of the Allegheny Front escarpment). Anthracite coal is a natural mineral with a high carbon and energy content that gives off light and heat produced energy when burned, making it useful as a fuel. It was possibly first used in Pennsylvania as a fuel in 1769, but its history begins with a documented discovery near Summit Hill and the founding of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company in 1792 to periodically send expeditions to the wilderness atop Pisgah Ridge to mine the deposits, mostly with notable lack of great success, over the next 22 years.

The Federal Coal Commission was an agency of the Federal government of the United States of America, enacted by the U.S. Congress in September 1922 and headed by former U.S. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall.