Mining and Economic Revitalization of the Bituminous Coal Region of Appalachia

MINING AND ECONOMIC REVITALIZATION OF THE BITUMINOUS COAL REGION OF APPALACHIA E. Willard Miller Coal mining began in the Appalachian region in the eighteenth century. After experiencing a nearly uninterrupted increase in production for about 150 years, output reached an initial peak in the early 1920's when about 370,000,000 tons of bituminous coal were produced annually. From this peak a long period of decline began, with some fluctuations, until a low point in production was reached in 1961 when the Appalachian bituminous coal fields produced but 289,000,000 tons. Production rose to 377,717,000 tons in 1974. (1) With annual bituminous coal production in the Appalachian coal fields increasing by about 88,000,000 tons between 1961 and 1974 the basic questions to be investigated in this study are: can coal act as a catalyst to develop a distinct mining economy in the expanding bituminous coal producing regions in the 1970's as it did in the late nineteenth century; and can an increase in mining generate new economic activities in the growth mining areas? COAL—AN ECONOMIC CATALYST. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the economy of many regions of Appalachia was based on the mining of coal. One of the best known generalizations concerning regional growth has been that economic development begins with the exploitation of a fundamental, primary resource within a region. The expansion of the primary industrial sector is thus expected to lay the foundation for further regional development. Of the Appalachian areas dominated by an early mining economy, Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania provides an excellent example. (2) Coal mining developed in the 1860's and production rose to a peak of about 33,000,000 tons in 1918. Because coal mining was labor intensive, employment in mining increased to about 27,600. Dr. Miller is Professor of Geography and Associate Dean of Resident Instruction in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802. 82Southeastern Geographer Coal mining alone provided more than two-thirds of the employment in the county. Thus this single economic activity dominated the economy not only directly, but all other sectors were related to it. In at least 20 towns coal mining and the related beehive coke industry was the sole economic activity. Under the stimulus of a coal economy the population in Fayette County increased from 39,909 in 1860 to 188,104 in 1920. From 1920 to 1960 coal gradually lost its importance as a generator of economic activity in many of Appalachia's largest coal producing counties. As a result the major bituminous coal counties stagnated as their coal economies declined. Again, using Fayette County as an example of a declining coal economy, from 1918 to 1960 coal production declined from 33,000,000 tons to 1,120,000 tons. Employment in coal mining declined from its peak of 27,600 in the 1920's to 1,145 in 1961. Although the decline of coal mining released large supplies of labor, no major new economic activities were attracted to Fayette County. Unemployment led to outmigration, and between 1920 and 1960 the population declined from 188,104 to 169,340. METHODS. The first step in this investigation was to determine which coal producing counties experienced major increases in production between 1961 and 1974. The central tendency and net shift techniques were utilized. Central Tendency. In 1974 the 150 coal producing counties in the Appalachian Bituminous Coal Region had a total output of 377,717,000 tons ( Fig. 1 ) . If all counties in that year had had an equal production the average output per county would have been 2,518,000 tons. This figure is thus the Appalachian mean. Output varied, however, from a high of 21,249,000 tons in Pike County, Kentucky, to a low of 1,000 tons in Cherokee County, Alabama. Output in 44 counties was above the mean and in 106 counties below the mean. The 44 counties above the mean produced 308,525,000 tons of coal, or 81.7 percent of total production. (3) The central tendency measure reveals that coal production was not evenly distributed in the...