Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum
On a rainy day in January, you are driving alone on an interstate. Up and down you go through mist covered hills, dark forests and tan, dormant fields. You are listening to a sermon about the fruits of the spiritual life on Christian radio, feeling ambivalent about religion.
You come upon a broad valley, filled with cities and towns that look like urban New Jersey. Getting off the interstate, you pass narrow winding highways lined with strip malls, Industrial facilities, piles of scrap metal, and neighborhoods of densely packed, old wood frame houses. A downtown of grey concrete office buildings is visible a few miles away. You drive to a suburban park, and pull up to a cinderblock building like the least inviting public library you have ever seen. Only one other car is in the parking lot, on a Saturday afternoon. This is the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum.
The valley you are in, home to Scranton / Wilkes-Barre, is the heart of Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region. The name comes from the hard, efficient, clean- and hot-burning coal, mined here, that fueled the Industrial Revolution, and heated our buildings for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The museum has information about coal mining - geology, equipment, techniques - but it’s a heritage museum, not just a mining museum.
New immigrants and people from around the country flooded into this area during hits heyday. The museum indicates that they came either because they believed they would find more opportunities for their family as American industrial workers, to earn money and return home, or sometimes they really didn’t know what they were getting into. Some brought mining or other industrial experience, and were able to start out in skilled positions or as “contract miners,” but others had to start as unskilled laborers and hope to rise. There was also a circular career path that started you off around age twelve in the “breaking room,” sorting pieces of coal by size, graduated you to more physically demanding work as you grew, and returned you to the breaking room in old age, infirmity, or dismemberment. You had some idea of the dangers and health risks of coal mining, but the museum made them vivid.
Many miners were motivated by poverty and desperation, but there also was, and is, professional pride. Coal mining seems so bad in so many ways that few people would want to try it even for a few hours, but it is truly “honest work,” more than just about anything else, producing value directly from the earth by a huge application of force. Plenty of skill and judgement seem to be involved.
You have heard of the violent conflicts between labor in capital in this area, and the eventual rise of the United Mine Workers, and these famous events are well documented in the museum. But have you heard of bootleg mining? During the great depression era, out of work miners would dig their own pits, sometimes in their backyards.
Silk weaving followed mining here, having “run away” from its original center in Paterson, NJ. In the Anthracite Region, mills found cheap, initially non-union labor. As mines generally only employed men, and there were few other opportunities available, plenty of working class women were in need of a job. After mining declined and closed down in the 50’s, the silk industry went on for a while, leaving a lot of unemployed men supported by women for a time.
“Outmigration” from the Anthracite region has been huge for its entire industrial history. Even during its growth and prosperity, it was essentially a one industry town, and with that industry so taxing and dangerous, it is easy to imagine many people and families choosing to move out as soon as they could, hopefully to better things. The anthracite mining industry also began to collapse earlier here than other industries in other cities. The 1940 census already shows Scranton’s population in decline, while other famously troubled cities like Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Detroit show growth until 1960 (according to Wikipedia). The early decline may partly explain why the Anthracite Region is so white, when so much coal in America has been mined by black workers and, historically, slaves. Perhaps by the time of the Great Migration, there were already few opportunities here. The population drop continues today. You wonder where everyone has been going, and in general how the descendants of coal miners have fared in this country. The one destination the Museum mentions is Brooklyn. Did they then have to give the American Dream a second try?
What kind of community did anthracite mining produce here? You have mysteriously little personal knowledge of Scranton / Wilkes-Barre. Although it's a large urban center less than two hours from where you were born and spent most of your life, you have never met or heard of anyone from here, anyone with any kind of connection here, or anyone traveling here not on the way elsewhere. There are a number of colleges, but you know of none of their alumni. Once you stopped once for lunch in Scranton, and it was one of the worst Mexican restaurants you can remember. A friend got pizza there and was also disappointed. You reflect that the museum talks about the strong family values that many European immigrants brought, and subsequent Americanization, seeming to suggest that the values failed to take root in our modern, industrial democracy. You admit to imagining a cultural wasteland: people making a living without much to live for, anyone with any ambition leaving. This seems unfair and untrue, but you have no other ideas about the area.
How does the Anthracite Region remember its mining heritage? Mountain-sized piles of culm, or waste coal, throughout the area must make it impossible to completely forget. Occasional problems like land subsidence over old mine tunnels surely also keep it in mind. But is there pride? A cultural connection to the past? The quietness and lackluster appearance of the Anthracite Heritage Museum could either speak to its unimportance or to the general depression of the area. It’s hard to know, not knowing any of the people.
You get back on the interstate, and cross and climb out of the valley. You identify giant culm piles and wonder at vast brownfields. Then, on you continue through forested hills for miles, as daylight fades. This huge, urbanized, environmentally damaged Region invites further exploration, of a morbid nature.
You come upon a broad valley, filled with cities and towns that look like urban New Jersey. Getting off the interstate, you pass narrow winding highways lined with strip malls, Industrial facilities, piles of scrap metal, and neighborhoods of densely packed, old wood frame houses. A downtown of grey concrete office buildings is visible a few miles away. You drive to a suburban park, and pull up to a cinderblock building like the least inviting public library you have ever seen. Only one other car is in the parking lot, on a Saturday afternoon. This is the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum.
The valley you are in, home to Scranton / Wilkes-Barre, is the heart of Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region. The name comes from the hard, efficient, clean- and hot-burning coal, mined here, that fueled the Industrial Revolution, and heated our buildings for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The museum has information about coal mining - geology, equipment, techniques - but it’s a heritage museum, not just a mining museum.
New immigrants and people from around the country flooded into this area during hits heyday. The museum indicates that they came either because they believed they would find more opportunities for their family as American industrial workers, to earn money and return home, or sometimes they really didn’t know what they were getting into. Some brought mining or other industrial experience, and were able to start out in skilled positions or as “contract miners,” but others had to start as unskilled laborers and hope to rise. There was also a circular career path that started you off around age twelve in the “breaking room,” sorting pieces of coal by size, graduated you to more physically demanding work as you grew, and returned you to the breaking room in old age, infirmity, or dismemberment. You had some idea of the dangers and health risks of coal mining, but the museum made them vivid.
Many miners were motivated by poverty and desperation, but there also was, and is, professional pride. Coal mining seems so bad in so many ways that few people would want to try it even for a few hours, but it is truly “honest work,” more than just about anything else, producing value directly from the earth by a huge application of force. Plenty of skill and judgement seem to be involved.
You have heard of the violent conflicts between labor in capital in this area, and the eventual rise of the United Mine Workers, and these famous events are well documented in the museum. But have you heard of bootleg mining? During the great depression era, out of work miners would dig their own pits, sometimes in their backyards.
Silk weaving followed mining here, having “run away” from its original center in Paterson, NJ. In the Anthracite Region, mills found cheap, initially non-union labor. As mines generally only employed men, and there were few other opportunities available, plenty of working class women were in need of a job. After mining declined and closed down in the 50’s, the silk industry went on for a while, leaving a lot of unemployed men supported by women for a time.
“Outmigration” from the Anthracite region has been huge for its entire industrial history. Even during its growth and prosperity, it was essentially a one industry town, and with that industry so taxing and dangerous, it is easy to imagine many people and families choosing to move out as soon as they could, hopefully to better things. The anthracite mining industry also began to collapse earlier here than other industries in other cities. The 1940 census already shows Scranton’s population in decline, while other famously troubled cities like Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Detroit show growth until 1960 (according to Wikipedia). The early decline may partly explain why the Anthracite Region is so white, when so much coal in America has been mined by black workers and, historically, slaves. Perhaps by the time of the Great Migration, there were already few opportunities here. The population drop continues today. You wonder where everyone has been going, and in general how the descendants of coal miners have fared in this country. The one destination the Museum mentions is Brooklyn. Did they then have to give the American Dream a second try?
What kind of community did anthracite mining produce here? You have mysteriously little personal knowledge of Scranton / Wilkes-Barre. Although it's a large urban center less than two hours from where you were born and spent most of your life, you have never met or heard of anyone from here, anyone with any kind of connection here, or anyone traveling here not on the way elsewhere. There are a number of colleges, but you know of none of their alumni. Once you stopped once for lunch in Scranton, and it was one of the worst Mexican restaurants you can remember. A friend got pizza there and was also disappointed. You reflect that the museum talks about the strong family values that many European immigrants brought, and subsequent Americanization, seeming to suggest that the values failed to take root in our modern, industrial democracy. You admit to imagining a cultural wasteland: people making a living without much to live for, anyone with any ambition leaving. This seems unfair and untrue, but you have no other ideas about the area.
How does the Anthracite Region remember its mining heritage? Mountain-sized piles of culm, or waste coal, throughout the area must make it impossible to completely forget. Occasional problems like land subsidence over old mine tunnels surely also keep it in mind. But is there pride? A cultural connection to the past? The quietness and lackluster appearance of the Anthracite Heritage Museum could either speak to its unimportance or to the general depression of the area. It’s hard to know, not knowing any of the people.
You get back on the interstate, and cross and climb out of the valley. You identify giant culm piles and wonder at vast brownfields. Then, on you continue through forested hills for miles, as daylight fades. This huge, urbanized, environmentally damaged Region invites further exploration, of a morbid nature.
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