Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1882 — The Goal Crop. [ARTICLE]

The Goal Crop.

Washington, Jan. 30. The census office has just published a report on the production of bituminous coal, from which it appears the total amount mined in the United States during the census year 1880 was 42,420,580 tons, of which total 29,842,240 tons were produced in the Appalachian coal field. Allegheny county, Pa., furnished over onetenth, and the Stales of Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio nearly three-fourths of the entire product. The average price per ton at the mine in 1880 was $1.22, while in 1870 it was $1.92, at a cost of 88 cents. An average of 431 53-100 tons was raised per man and 16.8 per cenLof the year’s working time, or about twenty days per man, was lost in strikes. Sufficient information was gathered to justify the assumption that the exhausted fields form but a very small fraction of the total available coal land. Attention is called to the fact that, although the value of the product has fallen, wages have not correspondingly decreased, and the totals prove again nearly a third of a million dollars annually in favor of labor. Anthracite product was 286,649,996 tons, nearly all furnished by the State of Pennsylvania, making the total product of the country for the census year 761,066,576 tons. England produced 746,818,122 tons in the same year.