How Did Coal Affect American Society

The coal industry became the backbone of the American industrial revolution in the 1800’s. It became this due to its ability power trains, which made it possible for people and goods to be shipped around the United States. Coal became a huge part of every American’s daily life, leading the industry to inflate rapidly. Due to high commercial and personal use, coal became extremely profitable, leading to coal mines to sprout up all over America. The mines reached as far south as Kentucky and as west as Wyoming, with the highest density or mines residing in the Appalachians. With the rapid expansion of the coal industry, came a rapid expansion of people flocking coal country in order to find work. Wherever the coal moved, the people followed.

Due to coal being a gigantic part of American society during the 1900’s, a vast amount of pressure was under coal miners to produce enough to keep up with the high demand. Coal affected many Americans on a daily basis as it was a “major source of fuel for heating homes, powering industry, and running the trains that carried the products and people of this country.” Many miners thought that their wages did not represent the amount of work that they had to do. This led Miners to respond to unfair wages by “organizing into craft unions”. These unions used their sheer numbers to create and exploit America’s dependence on coal, which in turn led to extremely successful and impactful labor strikes.The 1902 miners strike became one of the most famous of these strikes, as the strike became so large and affected the daily lives of so many Americans that President Roosevelt deemed it necessary to personally call a meeting between the Miners and their employers. This marked the first time that the President of the United States personally became involved in ending a strike. The president's engagement led to “ rancorous negotiation” and which eventually led to the miners returning to the mines six months after the strike began. While this strike provided miners with better wages, it made it harder for the mining companies to turn a

Due to more and more cities switching from fossil fuels to cleaner, more sustainable sources of energy, coal became less and less a part of each Americans daily life. For example, in 1966, one of John Lindsays major campaign ideas that got him elected mayor of New York City planned to eliminate the use of coal in the city. He did this by “, requiring reduction of the maximum sulfur content of coal and oil from its original level of 2.8% to 1% in three stages in five years.” These sanctions made it impossible for coal to be used as a fuel source, leading New York to leave coal in the past and look for other methods of energy. However, just because coal vanished from parts of America, does not mean it disappeared entirely. Instead of producing its own coal, America imported coal from outside of its border. Many coal miners saw imported coal as a harsh reminder for many that still lived in coal country that “it was cheaper for the local power company to burn imported coal from Colombia than to use coal mines less than a kilometer away.” This realization that the coal Industry would never come back crushed hundreds of thousands of people who lived in rural mining towns along the appalations. The repercussions of taking away one of America's most prominent industry for people in rural America fuel