![]() ![]() It also faced the prospect of increased competition from oil and natural gas and the loss of traditional markets such as home heating and locomotive fuel. ![]() Although production reached record levels during the Second World War, management feared a recurrence of the collapse that had followed World War I. Hanna Company group of Cleveland, dealers in coal and iron ore. Eventually, stock control passed into the hands of the M.A. on November 1, 1935, and was able to retain its position as one of the nation's top coal producers. Consol was reorganized and reincorporated in Delaware as the Consolidation Coal Company, Inc. The Rockefellers liquidated their holdings at a loss, and the Carter Coal Company was returned to the Carter heirs in 1933. In 1925, Consol became the nation's largest producer of bituminous coal, excluding the captive mines of the steel companies.ĭuring the Great Depression, Consolidation Coal experienced serious financial difficulties and was forced into receivership on June 2, 1932. In February 1922, Consol secured a long term lease and option on the Carter Coal Company, whose 37,000 acres straddled the borders of Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. Consolidation Coal purchased 30,000 acres in the Millers Creek Field of Eastern Kentucky in 1909 and 100,000 acres in the Elkhorn Field the next year. Of equal importance, operators in the remote mountains had been able to resist unionization and thus achieve lower operating costs, while all of Consol's previous holdings had been in the so-called "Central Competitive Field" to the north, which had been unionized in the 1890s. The mines in this region yielded a low volatile coal that provided an ideal fuel source for stationary steam engines, ships, and locomotives. Aspinwall, Erastus Corning, the Delanos and Roosevelts, and the Boston financier John Murray Forbes, who already had substantial investments in the region.Īfter the B&O divestiture, Consol began expanding into the Southern Appalachian coal fields, which were just being opened by railroads on a large scale. The Consolidation Coal merger was put together by New Yorkers such as William H. railroad rail at its Mount Savage mill in 1844. Lewis Howell's Maryland and New York Iron and Coal Company rolled the first solid U.S. Naturally, New York capitalists and manufacturers played a leading role in developing the field. Cumberland coal was ideal for ship bunkering, and much of the output was shipped to New York Harbor. This also coincided with the development of ocean steam navigation and a rapid growth in the number of railroad locomotives and stationary steam engines. However, large-scale development could not occur until the mid-1840s, after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad reached Cumberland and provided reliable transportation. Coal had been mined in the region beginning in the 1700s, and the first coal company, the Maryland Mining Company, had been incorporated in 1828. The Georges Creek or Cumberland Coal Field, occupying part of the triangle of western Maryland, contained a high-quality, low-volatile bituminous steam coal which was also, thanks to the Potomac River, the coal of this type most accessible to Eastern markets. ![]()
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