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Promotion, Competition, Captivity: The Political Economy of Coal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Sean Patrick Adams
Sean Patrick Adams
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Extract

“Coal is, perhaps, the most indispensable article used by man. Without it, in time, we should return to a state of barbarism.” So proclaimed the president of Pennsylvania's Pequa Railroad and Improvement Company in 1849. The importance of coal, the official explained, lay in its utility as an energy source, for which he hailed it as unsurpassed: coal was “‘hoarded labor’”—a “treasure reserved by nature to promote and perfect our civilization.” The railroad official's florid tribute to the mineral fuel was hardly disinterested: the Pequa Railroad had ambitious plans to ship a great deal of coal. Yet it effectively underscored the enormous role of coal in nineteenth-century America. It was an age in which, as countless industry boosters proclaimed, coal was king.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 18 , Issue 1: Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America , January 2006 , pp. 74 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2006

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References

Notes

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