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[Illustration: COAL FIELDS OF THE WORLD]
THE COMING OF COAL
BY
ROBERT W. BRUERE
OF THE BUREAU OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH
Prepared for
The Educational Committee of the
Commission on the Church and Social Service
of the
Federal Council of the
Churches of Christ
in America
=ASSOCIATION PRESS=
NEW YORK: 347 MADISON AVENUE
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ROBERT W. BRUERE
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOREWORD
This book, important in subject and scientific in method, appears under
religious auspices for a very definite reason. The Educational Committee
of the Federal Council of Churches has sought to find concrete
expression for those Christian principles which are too often confined
to abstract statement. Christian ethics are well understood in theory.
There is need now for a science of Christian conduct through which we
may realize ethical ideals in our working life.
Because of its basic character and its present importance in the public
mind the coal industry offers a field for this endeavor. Hence the
Educational Committee presents through the medium of the Press of the
Young Men's Christian Association, this book, addressed particularly to
the people of the churches of America.
THE EDUCATIONAL COMMITTEE.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Challenge of Power 1
II. Coming of Coal 4
III. Drama of Civilization 10
IV. Coal in America 22
V. Awakening of the Miners 34
VI. Struggle for Organization 50
VII. Rise of Democracy 66
VIII. Rivals of Coal 78
IX. The Technical Revolution 90
X. The Strait Gate 102
Bibliography 114
Index 120
CHAPTER I
THE CHALLENGE OF POWER
Scientists tell us that the energy poured by the sun on the Desert of
Sahara in a single day exceeds by fourfold the energy stored in the
annual production of all the coal fields in the world. They dream of a
time when the radiant energy of the sun will be captured and turned to
the uses of man. Then the wheels of our myriad machines will spin with
the sun and the stars. In the soft whirr of their motors men will hear
the music of the spheres.
When that time comes, will it signal the triumph of man's will over
nature, the end of the brute struggle with hunger? Will it find our
ideals of cooperation, service, and brotherhood ripe for practical
application? Or will it mark a new intensification of the exploitation
of man by men, of the clash of groups for power, of international wars
for possession? Shall we have the spiritual capacity to match our
technical achievement? Shall we know what we mean when we pray Thy
Kingdom Come on Earth as IT IS in Heaven?
That prayer was old on the lips of men when a comparable gift was
discovered. During ages without number the shifting seas and the
slow-moving mountains had pressed down the sun's vintage in the coal
beds of the earth. Less than two centuries ago the steam engine
harnessed coal to the looms of England. With coal came iron and steel,
and with steel and steam came the industrial revolution, its factories
massed in cities, its railroads weaving manufacturing centers together,
its steel ships and cables and telegraph wires unfolding and integrating
the economic life of the world. In western Europe especially it
converted an age-long economic deficit into an economic surplus. For the
first time in human history it brought the possibility of the good life
to every man's door. But it found men spiritually unprepared. The
ancient bread hunger was still upon them. As in the tribal days men
warred upon one another for food, so now they warred upon one another
for coal and the incredible spawn of coal. For coal means food,
clothing, houses, ships, railroads, newspapers, chemicals, and guns.
With the coming of coal and coal-driven machinery the earth and the
fullness thereof was unlocked for the service of man. There was not only
the possibility of the good life for each but also of a noble,
well-ordered civilization for all. But instead of establishing
civilization on foundations of mutual aid, service, and brotherhood, men
turned their cities into shambles of childhood, poverty was embittered,
civil strife in mine, mill, and factory became endemic, wars on an
unprecedented scale engaged nations and groups of nations. The World War
and the famine and widespread desolation that followed gave tragic
evidence of our spiritual unpreparedness.
Yet it would be as falsely sentimental to set up a golden age as a
heightening background for the evils that came with coal as it would be
to ignore or gloze over those evils. Economic insecurity, poverty,
disease, wars, and blighted childhood are as old as human existence. The
world is a better, richer, more vibrant, and thrilling abode since coal
came than it was before. The indictment of our coal age can be justly
based, not upon what it has destroyed, but rather upon what it has
missed,--upon its spiritually blind, its bungling and inadequate use of
a gift more magnificent than any allotted to man since grain was first
sown to the harvest and ground at a mill. An indictment that involves
all mankind is hardly an indictment at all. It is rather a confession of
our common human limitations, a recognition of the tragic circumstances
of our spiritual growth. It will be answered when we as individuals and
nations and groups of nations, set ourselves to turn the wisdom of
experience to account in building a civilization worthy of a world that
moves through infinite space with the sun and the marching stars.