106 ChaPter 2
joined the Union side. By the end of the 19th Century, a region that had once
been mostly countryside was flooded with investors, machines, and workers, for
one reason only—coal! As one West Virginia official described it, “We think
coal and live coal. If you take our coal from us, we should go back to the days
of the bobcat and the wilderness. Coal is our existence.” Indeed, coal produc-
tion was soaring all over the U.S., providing the fuel for the industrialization
of the economy. In 1850, U.S. mines produced 8.4 million short tons [2,000
pound units]; in 1870, that number rose to 40 million tons; by 1900 it was 270
million; and in 1918 peaked at 680 million short tons [see chart on coal pro-
duction below]. West Virginia was a major source of this coal. In 1867, West
Virginia mine operators produced 490,000 tons, a number that increased ten-
fold by 1887, and went up in 1917 to over 89 million tons. In just one area
that had virtually no people in the late 1800s, McDowell County, coal produc-
tion rose to 18 million tons by 1920. With that production came a flood of
workers as well, especially immigrants. While there were about 3,700 miners
in 1880, nearly 90,000 worked the West Virginia mines by the 1910s.
With so much coal, West Virginia would seem to be a wealthy state, but
in reality it contained some of the worst poverty in America. To a large extent,FIGuRE 2-11 u.S. Coal Production