Coal Operators and Market Competition: The Case of West Virginia’s Smokeless Coalfields and the Fairmont Field, 1853–1933

Abstract

a fierce commercial war that West Virginia’s coal operators waged against their northern rivals in the coalfields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana from 1853 to 1933, and focuses on two coal mining regions in West Virginia, the Fairmont Field in the north and the smokeless coalfields—the New River, Pocahontas, and Winding Gulf that straddled the counties of Fayette, Raleigh, Mercer, McDowell, and Wyoming—to the south. Bituminous coal production in the United States grew rapidly around the turn of the twentieth century in response to the country’s rising industrial demand. But the coal trade of the era was characterized by excessive competition, price fluctuations, and low profitability. Mary Beth Pudup has noted that bituminous coal operators weathered the vagaries of the coal trade through mergers and consolidations, regional trade associations, and joint sales organizations. Northern operators even turned to unionization as a way to equalize costs among producers. 2 When the operators of western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana tried to neutralize competition from their low-cost southern rivals by reaching an accord with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to negotiate industry-wide wage scales, West Virginia’s operators strenuously fought off this maneuver. The repeated refusals of West Virginia coal operators to recognize the union transformed West Virginia into a pariah in the eyes of its northern rivals, “a gun pointed at the heart of industrial government in the bituminous industry.” 3