Figures Which Must Convince the $10-a-Week Clerk That He Came Too
Late—Had He Flourished in England Several Centuries Ago He Might Have
Cut as Wide a Swath as a Present-Day Millionaire.
It makes the ordinary, hard-working householder envious to see the
luxurious display of fortune’s favorites. He finds it hard enough
struggle to get the necessaries of life without any of its delicacies,
and to keep the cost within his income. Nor can he look back into the
days of long ago for consolation. It only increases his discomfiture to
compare his expense account with those of his ancestors.
If a man had a quarter in his pocket in the days of the Plantagenets,
for instance, he could keep his family well supplied for a week. With
that amount of money he could smile at the butcher, bow openly to the
grocer, and look the rest of the world as squarely in the face as did
the village blacksmith.
If he lived in England seven hundred years ago and wished to regale
his family on mutton, he could buy the finest of fat sheep for
twenty-four cents, which would almost allow him to give a banquet on a
pennyworth of mutton. A cow was more expensive, but one dollar and a
half would buy the best he could find in the market, while for a fat
hog he need only part with eighty cents.
In the fourteenth century, two cents would buy a pair of chickens, and
a nickel for a goose fit to grace any Christmas dinner-table, and a
penny would purchase a dozen new-laid eggs; while for two cents the
brewer was compelled by law to sell three gallons of beer, the
equivalent of forty-eight glasses.
Wheat sometimes fell as low as forty cents a quarter, though after a
great storm, or In a time of “grievous famine,” it would rise as high
as four and five dollars a quarter. Still, at these prices a good many
pounds of bread could be bought for a penny.
Pasture and arable lands were ridiculously cheap—two cents an acre for
the former and twelve cents an acre for the latter being considered a
fair annual rental. Draft-horses were a drug on the market at
seventy-two cents each, and oxen at one dollar and twenty cents. In
the days of the second Henry fifty dollars would have equipped a farm
with three draft-horses, half a dozen oxen, twenty cows, and two
hundred sheep, leaving a balance of two dollars toward the payment of
the rent—about five dollars a year.
As for labor, three cents a day was deemed good wages for an ordinary
laborer, and even at harvest-time four cents a day was the highest sum
expected.
House rent was so absurdly small that the Lord Mayor of London paid
only four dollars and eighty cents a year to his landlord; and the
Chancellor, with an annual salary of one hundred and ninety-two
dollars, seemed poorer than many a cook of our own time. When a father
sent his son to a university six centuries ago, four cents a day was
considered a comfortable allowance, with a margin for such luxuries as
wine at eight or twelve cents a gallon.
Twenty-four dollars a year was a munificent salary in those days. It
was the exact sum paid to the assistant clerk of Parliament, and more
than the average priest, with cure of souls, received; while the
pension allowed by Edward III to his apothecary was only twelve cents
a day, and King Edward IV’s allowance to his daughter was but four
dollars and eighty cents a week, with an additional two hundred and
forty-seven dollars and sixty cents a year for the maintenance of her
eight servants.
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth prices were still exceedingly modest,
and, it is only fair to add, wages low in proportion. From a household
book of 1589 we take the following typical prices: Beef, two and a
half cents a pound; a neck of mutton, twelve cents; twenty-eight
pounds of veal and a shoulder of mutton, fifty-six cents; cheese, four
cents a pound; wheat, three dollars and eighty-four cents a quarter
ton.
The Story of Anthracite.
Though a Company Was Organized in 1792 to Market “Stone Coal,” As Late
as 1817 a Man Who Sold Some was Charged With Swindling by
Philadelphians, Who Where Unable to Make it Burn.
_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
Coal is such a commonplace article that few people take the trouble to
find out what it is and how it came into use. The average householder’s
thoughts about coal are mainly confined to questions of price.
One picks up, of course, such interesting facts as that the United
States burns three hundred and fifty million tons a year, at a cost to
consumers of about seven hundred million dollars. In this estimate all
grades of anthracite and bituminous coal are included. One wonders how
long the visible supply will last, and whether the men who in future
generations are to take up the work begun by Edison and other
experimenters will find a new source of practical heat-supply in time to
prevent a protracted “cold spell” when the coal gives out.
One is troubled, too, by the relations between miner and operator, and
is worried when he learns that the great strike of 1902, for example,
involved a total loss to workers, operators, railroads, and business men
of about one hundred and fifty million dollars.
But all these matters are problems of the day—mere seconds on the clock
of Nature. If we look back over so brief a gap as one hundred and
fifteen years, we shall see the discovery of anthracite in America.
In 1791 a hunter, named Philip Ginther, lived on the eastern slopes of
the mountains which are drained by the Lehigh River. Late one afternoon
he found himself at the summit of Sharp Mountain. A storm was coming up,
and Ginther broke into a run, for his home was some distance away.
Stumbling over the roots of a fallen tree, he kicked up a black stone,
and noticed that the soil in which the tree had grown was mingled with
similar specimens of an unusual formation.
Now Ginther had heard that there was “stone coal” in the mountains, so
he picked up the stumbling-block which had checked his course, and
carried it home with him and gave it to Colonel Jacob Weiss, who lived
near the site of the present Mauch Chunk. Colonel Weiss sent the
specimen to Philadelphia, where it fell into the hands of Charles Cist,
a printer, who recognized it as anthracite and advised Colonel Weiss to
buy the land where the coal had been found.
To get the land was easy, for the region was wild and remote from the
easier connections of civilization. Colonel Weiss bought from the
government several thousand acres, and organized in 1792 the Lehigh Coal
Mine Company. His associates included Robert Morris (the well-known
financier), John Nicholson, Charles Cist, and J. Anthony Morris.
In May, 1792, an expedition—four laborers, with a member of the company
to direct them—set out to open and work the mine. It was found that a
great bed of anthracite lay quite near the surface. The company quarried
several tons of the coal.
The question now was how to dispose of the product. The anthracite was
there in vast quantity, ready to be pilfered from old Earth; but many
miles of forest and mountain separated the mine from the nearest market.
Moreover, people were dubious as to the burning value of anthracite, and
wood was still plentiful, and—well, like other new products, anthracite
had to prove its usefulness before it would be accepted.
After a few weeks the laborers were discharged. Colonel Weiss carried
lumps of coal in his saddle-bags and induced a few of the blacksmiths of
near-by settlements to try it; but there was no general tendency to
adopt the new fuel.
The Pennsylvania Legislature, in 1798, chartered a company to improve
the navigation of the Lehigh River. The work was completed in 1802, but
although the removal of obstructions and the building of wing-dams were
something of an improvement, the river was still likely to prove rude to
voyagers. The coal company, however, resumed its quarrying, and built a
fleet of arks which, during high water in the spring of 1803, were
loaded with coal and sent down the stream. Four of the six arks were
wrecked; two reached Philadelphia. But when the Philadelphians tried to
burn the coal, they had no success with it, and the Lehigh Coal Mine
Company abandoned its efforts to introduce a fuel so unlucky.
In 1810 coal was found near Pottsville, and blacksmiths used it
successfully. A Philadelphia chemist, after making a careful analysis,
announced that the heating power of anthracite was extraordinary.
Colonel George Shoemaker, who had dug up coal on his lands near
Pottsville, loaded eight or ten wagons in 1817, and took the caravan to
Philadelphia. Inasmuch as he guaranteed that the “stones” would burn, he
succeeded in disposing of his stock; but now, as formerly, the
Philadelphians failed to get any heat from their purchases—except the
heat of their tempers, which led them to secure a warrant for the arrest
of Colonel Shoemaker on the charge of swindling. He escaped to
Pottsville by making a detour, and meantime the Fairmount nail-works,
which had bought several tons of the anthracite, hit accidentally upon
the way to make it burn.
The proprietor and several of his men had spent a morning vainly trying
to fire up a furnace with the coal. They had raked, stirred, poked, and
used blowers, but the stuff refused to burn. Noon came, and the men shut
the furnace door and went to their dinner. When they came back they
found the furnace red hot. The closed door had solved the draft problem.
The way to make anthracite burn was to shut it in the furnace and let it
alone.
In a few years more the coal industry became established. The Lehigh
company reentered the field. They shipped 365 tons In 1820, 1,000 tons
in 1821, and 2,240 in 1822. By 1830 their annual production was more
than 41,000 tons; by 1840 it was 225,000 tons; by 1850, 722,000 tons. Up
to 1847 the company got all its coal from its open quarry on the summit
of Sharp Mountain. Boats carried the coal down the Lehigh.
To get the product from the mine to the river, a railway, nine miles
long, was built in 1827. Excepting a track laid in the quarries at
Quincy, Massachusetts, this was the first railway to be operated in the
New World. Mules drew the cars to the summit; gravity carried them down.
The little black stone which the good people of Philadelphia rejected in
1792 has become the keystone of all our industries.