Coal Age

Vols. for 1955-62 include: Mining guidebook and buying directory.

Excerpt from Coal Mining Kinks: Compiled From the Regular Issues of Coal Age This difficulty may be overcome by sharpening the drill as shown in Fig. 1, where, it will be seen, the corners have been turned back so that the cutting edge assumes a curved outline. Such a drill point as this will not wedge in ordinary cracks and will thus prevent sticking. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Electricity has penetrated deeply into virtually every aspect of American life, be it in industry, the home, or in the rapidly growing commercial and service sectors. This book documents and analyzes the existence of a strong, and growing, synergy between technological progress and the use of electrified production techniques in the United States during the twentieth century. The authors use two types of information in their work: case studies of the ways in which technological progress in particular industries and economic sectors has depended upon the adoption of electrified methods of production and aggregative long-term national economic statistics that measure the changing relationship over time between increases in the use of electricity and other factor inputs and the growth in industrial productivity. Eleven of the book's thirteen chapters cover the case studies, while the remaining two chapters and the statistical appendix contain the broad quantitative findings and supporting data. In their analysis, the authors address three inter-related questions from a long-term evolutionary perspective: Why has electricity's share of total energy risen so sharply over the years? How has this rise been related to productivity growth? and Why has the rise in electricity led to long-term improvements in the efficiency of overall energy use despite the thermal energy losses sustained when fuels are converted into electricity? The answer to these questions, they contend, is the technological progress represented by electrified production technologies, and in the new ways of organizing production that are now possible. The different ways in which electrical energy has been put to work, and with what results, are examined in the various case studies presented, and further documented in the aggregative statistical analysis. This study reveals the important role that the electrification of production operations has played in supporting productivity growth in manufacturing and other economic sectors in the past, and the important part that it can continue to play in the future. This book will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers; those interested in productivity issues, energy policy, electricity in general, historians of technology, economic historians, and those interested in current technological issues. It will be a necessary acquisition for college and university libraries, as well as those individuals interested in energy, technology, economic growth, history, and the interfaces among them.

The first full account of why the American workplace became so dangerous, and why it is now so much safer. In 1907, American coal mines killed 3,242 men in occupational accidents, probably an all-time high both for the industry and for all laboring accidents in this country. In December alone, two mines at Monongah, West Virginia, blew up, killing 362 men. Railroad accidents that same year killed another 4,534. At a single South Chicago steel plant, 46 workers died on the job. In mines and mills and on railroads, work in America had become more dangerous than in any other advanced nation. Ninety years later, such numbers and events seem extraordinary. Although serious accidents do still occur, industrial jobs in the United States have become vastly and dramatically safer. In Safety First, Mark Aldrich offers the first full account of why the American workplace became so dangerous, and why it is now so much safer. Aldrich, an economist who once served as an OSHA investigator, first describes the increasing dangers of industrial work in late-nineteenth-century America as a result of technological change, careless work practices, and a legal system that minimized employers' responsibility for industrial accidents. He then explores the developments that led to improved safety—government regulation, corporate publicizing of safety measures, and legislation that raised the costs of accidents by requiring employers to pay workmen's compensation. At the heart of these changes, Aldrich contends, was the emergence of a safety ideology that stressed both worker and management responsibility for work accidents—a stunning reversal of earlier attitudes.