The 1860s and 70s are remembered as being ones of complete mayhem and bloodshed in the southern anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania. Complicated doesn’t cover it but suffice it to say it involved ethnic violence between the Welsh and Irish immigrants (the Welsh being expert miners were higher up the food chain), assassinations, alleged secret societies (the Molly Maguires and the AOH), the Roman Catholic Church, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association (forerunner to the United Mineworkers), the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and fundamentally the labour and capital battle. The latter headed by the devious Reading Railway that wanted control of the coal fields as well as the transport. This they eventually acquired.
Cutting to the chase, in the mid 70s many of the Molly’s went on trial (for want of a better word) for the 24 killings (nine were mine superintendants) that had occurred in the previous fourteen years. Twenty were hanged in the biggest mass execution in Pennsylvania legal history.
Coinciding with the trials in 1876, the American centennial celebrations took place. The centrepiece was the great exposition at Philadelphia. and the chief attraction was the huge Corliss Steam Engine designed to show the world the superiority of American industrial civilisation. I’ll let this pass without comment. The engine was never involved in mining but went on the power the Pullman car works before being scrapped in 1910. Many later Corliss engines were employed in the mines.
Anyway I thought a photo of the centrepiece may be of interest to those of you who have a far greater knowledge of engineering history than me. Not difficult because mine is virtually zilch.
President Grant and Dom Pedro (Emperor of Brazil) starting the Corliss engine.
🔗Personal-Album-272-Image-38240[linkphoto]Personal-Album-272-Image-38240[/linkphoto][/link]
Just to add this ocurred at the height of the worst economic depression the United States had ever known.
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.