Wealth, Waste, and Alienation

Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry

Kenneth Warren

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2001
• eBook ISBN: 9780822970545
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: History

The southwestern Pennsylvania town of Connellsville lay in the middle of a massive reserve of high quality coal. Connellsville coal was so soft and easily worked that one man and a boy could cut and load ten tons of it in ten hours. This region became a major source of coke, a vital material in industrial processes, above all in steel manufacture, producing forty-seven percent of America`s supply in 1913. But by the 1920s, what had seemed to be a gold mine was turning into a devastating economic, environmental and social loss. In Wealth, Waste and Alienation, Kenneth Warren draws from primary source material, including the minutes and letters of the Carnegie Steel Company, the United States Steel Corporation, and the archives of Henry Clay Frick, to explain the birth, phenomenal growth, decline and death of the Connellsville coke industry. Its rich natural resources produced wealth for individuals, companies, and some communities, but as Warren shows, there was also social alienation, waste, and devastation of the natural environment. The complicated structure of enterprise, capital, and labor which made this region flourish unwound almost as quickly as it arose, creating repercussions that are still reverberating in what's left of Connellsville today, a kind of postindustrial rural shell of its former productive glory.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Foundations of the Industry
• 2. The Maturing Industry
• 3. Organization in the Coke Trade
• 4. New Districts
• 5. New Technology
• 6. The Physical and Social Implications of Beehive Coke Manufacture
• 7. Peak and Decline
• Appendix A: Statistical Tables
• Appendix B: Biographical Notes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index