{"id":9572,"date":"2015-11-13T00:15:19","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T05:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=9572"},"modified":"2015-11-17T12:53:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T17:53:03","slug":"gritty-king-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2015\/11\/gritty-king-coal\/","title":{"rendered":"Gritty King Coal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Northwest<\/a>
Northwest Corner – 13th Street and Washington Avenue. B. F. Hill and Company-Coal Supplier, September 20, 1914. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the 1820s, Philadelphia investors \u201cawoke as if from a dream\u201d to the \u201cimmensity of the riches concealed in the mountains and ravines of their native State.\u201d As \u201cnews of fortunes accumulated by piercing the bowels of the earth, and bringing forth [coal] from the caverns of mountains,\u201d wrote\u00a0Edwin <\/a>Freedley<\/a>, the anthracite trade, which \u201cappeared yesterday but a fly, now assumed the gigantic proportions of an elephant!\u201d<\/p>\n

In an optimistic rush, investors who \u201cpreviously laughed at the infatuation of the daring pioneers of the coal trade\u201d now cooked up their own \u201cplans of towns\u2026surveys of coal lands\u2026railways, canals and\u2026other improvements.\u201d They poured five million dollars into the Schuylkill coals-fields to get black diamonds to the city, digging more than 800 miles of canals and building 1,600 miles of railroad. Investors made out. So did \u201claborers and mechanics of all kinds from all quarters and nations\u201d who \u201cflocked to the coal region,\u201d wrote Freedley, and \u201cfound ready and constant employment\u2026\u201d Down on Philadelphia\u2019s Schuykill docks, arrivals from Ireland found ready, backbreaking work as \u201ccoal heavers.\u201d \u00a0Dawn-to-dark work for a dollar a day.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia\u2019s appetite for coal\u2014a skimpy 365 tons in 1820\u2014flourished at 867,000 tons by 1840. Less than a decade after that, 5,000,000 tons of anthracite poured into the city.<\/p>\n

\"Caption\"<\/a>
(Detail) Northwest Corner \u2013 13th Street and Washington Avenue. B. F. Hill and Company-Coal Supplier, September 20, 1914. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nCheap coal meant cheap heat. Affordable, high-quality anthracite also gave the city\u2019s makers an edge. \u201cInexpensive and abundant coal,\u201d relates <\/span>The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia<\/a>, \u201chelped drive population and industrial growth. Citizens used it \u201cto heat homes, power factories, propel steamships, and smelt iron.\u201d Anthracite \u201cenabled Philadelphia to transform itself from a commercial city of merchants into an industrial powerhouse. \u2026 Canals, coal, and industrial Philadelphia grew together synergistically.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By the last quarter of the 19th century, when manufacture was strategically chosen as the theme for the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia could display its makeover to the world. By 1876, the question wasn\u2019t what Philadelphia manufactured\u2014but what it didn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Expansion\u2014and the fortunes made from it\u2014seemed endless. In the middle of the 19th-century, the Reading Railroad built a facility in Port Richmond large enough to handle more than 1.2 million tons of coal every year with wharves capacious enough to handle 100 ships at a time. After the Civil War, the Pennsylvania Railroad developed its own Greenwich Point Holding Yard, along the Delaware in South Philadelphia. By the early 1890s, <\/span>coal cars stretched as far as the eye could see<\/a>. Greenwich <\/span>car dumpers<\/a> heaved 300 carloads of coal each and every day.<\/span><\/p>\n

King Coal had rubbed his gritty elbows with Philadelphia. What could <\/span>possibly<\/em> go wrong?<\/span><\/p>\n

[Sources include: John C. Van Horne, etc. Traveling the Pennsylvania Railroad: Photographs of William H. Rau<\/i> (University of Pennsylvania Press,\u00a02002); Russell Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300 Year History<\/i> (W. W. Norton & Company, 1982)]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1820s, Philadelphia investors \u201cawoke as if from a dream\u201d to the \u201cimmensity of the riches concealed in the mountains and ravines of their native State.\u201d As \u201cnews of fortunes accumulated by piercing the bowels of the earth, and bringing forth [coal] from the caverns of mountains,\u201d wrote\u00a0Edwin Freedley, the anthracite trade, which \u201cappeared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}