Out of the Pit

In Cleveland's Public Hall last week, some 10,000 members of the American Mining Congress swarmed about huge machines that held the hope of new life for the dying coal industry. The metal monsters, along with sketches and pictures of others too huge to bring into the hall, promised dramatic cuts in mining costs all along the line.

Among eye-catchers:

P:Joy Manufacturing Co.'s 40-ton continuous coal miner that can eat into a coal seam at the rate of 4 1/2 feet per minute, mine eight tons of coal in the same time (see cut). Two boring arms bite into the coal, cut it into small pieces and carry it by conveyor belt to a waiting cart. Joy, with 300 older continuous miners in operation, says its new giant will carve out twice as much coal as the older models. Even before the new "Twin Borer" could be wheeled onto the floor, an Indiana producer snapped it up for $110,000.

P: A "portal" bus, designed by Lee-Norse Co., to cut the time a miner spends traveling from the surface to the mine's working area (for which he gets paid). The 90 minutes which miners now average riding into the mines on the same string of cars used to haul out coal, can be cut to 50 minutes by the bus. Price: $3,800 to $3,900.

P: Sketches of a 2,600-ton power shovel, made by the Marion (Ohio) Power Shovel Co., probably the largest piece of mobile equipment ever built. The $2,500,000 shovel, as high as a twelve-story building, will scoop out 100 tons of the earth and rock that covers coal deposits every 50 seconds.

The industry needs all the machine help it can get. One-third of the 9,000 mines producing in 1948 are shut down and only 214,000 of 1948's 442,000 miners are still employed; last year's bituminous output of some 395 million tons was a 15-year low. But the picture is brightening. Last week bituminous production was running about 16% above last year's rate, and most coalmen hope for a yearly output of at least 430 million tons, a figure some optimists claim is 20 million tons too low.

With the help of new mechanization, the daily output of coal per man will average close to ten tons this year v. 7 1/2 tons in 1952 and 6 1/2 tons during 1947. What is more cheering is the fact that the industry has just scratched the surface of its mechanical possibilities. But those who have moved fastest towards mechanization have found their markets increasing. In the past eight years, the 28 largest producers--most of them exponents of mechanization--have boosted their output 45%, while total industry production slumped 38%. As the U.S. economy grows to meet the needs of expanding population, coalmen expect that the output of completely mechanized, low-cost mines will not only increase, but will be able to compete on nearly equal terms with gas and oil.

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