During the years when industry, transportation and home heating were dependent on coal, there was no better coal than anthracite.  The Lackawanna Railroad created one of the great figures in advertising history, Miss Phoebe Snow, dressed in white and sure to arrive spotless and comfortable thanks to the clean-burning hard coal in the locomotive’s boilers.  Bituminous (soft) coal is more plentiful and still widely used, especially in the nation’s power plants, but during the first half of the 20^th century anthracite literally fueled America’s economic development.

          Nearly all the anthracite was mined in one eleven-county area of northeastern Pennsylvania.  By the1950s, however, most of the coal was gone and with it the businesses, communities and culture that had been part of the thriving anthracite region.  A new study by Binghamton University history professor Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania covers the rise of anthracite.  But the book is called “The Face of Decline” and it details the end of an era of economic opportunity, with the strife and attempts at cooperation that mark any shift in people’s work and self-esteem.

          The mining of anthracite involved both careful business decisions by entrepreneurs and the backbreaking physical labor of men willing to work underground.  Many of the mines were owned by railroad interests, especially the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western (DL&W) and the Lehigh Valley.  But Thomas Dublin points out that the improvement in transportation was not matched by an upgrade of work in the mines, especially compared with the overall modernization of American industry.  Also, labor and industry relationships were never easy in the coalfields, which were organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).  Much of the story of “The Face of Decline” is a story of labor strife, from the era of the legendary Molly Maguires to the rise of the UMWA as one of the most powerful, and most controversial, labor organizations in the country.

          In 1917 there were 175,000 people employed in anthracite mining in northeastern Pennsylvania.  Today there are fewer than a thousand.  Dublin and Licht present the facts and figures, but “The Face of Decline” is a human story and they trace the fate of individuals who labored in a harsh environment but didn’t have the heart to leave the region once the mines closed.

          “The Face of Decline” is the winner of the 2006 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians.  Thomas Dublin is the author of many books on labor histiry, including “Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860” which won the Merle Curti Award in 1980 (Dublin is the only person to win the Curti more than once).

          Dr. Dublin joins Bill Jaker on OFF THE PAGE to discuss labor and history and the labor of writing history, and to share stories of life in and around the Pennsylvania anthracite mines. To join in the program, phone during the live 1:00 PM broadcast to 1-888/359-9754, or post an e-mail here to WSKG.Radio@Gmail.com.