When the Mines Closed: Stories of Struggles in Hard Times

The anthracite region of northeastern Pennsylvania, 500 square miles of rugged hills stretching between Tower City and Carbondale, harboured coal deposits that once heated virtually all the homes and businesses in Eastern cities. At its peak during World War I, the coal industry there employed 170,000 miners and supported almost one million people. In the 1990s, with coal workers numbering 1500, only 5000 people depend on the industry for their livelihood. Between these two points in time lies a story of industrial decline, of working people facing incremental and cataclysmic changes in their world. Historian Thomas Dublin interviewed a cross-section of residents and migrants from the region, and in this volume presents their accounts of their work and family lives before and after the mines closed. Most of the narrators, six men and seven women, came of age during the Great Depression and entered area mines or, in the case of the women, garment factories, in their teens. They describe the difficult choices they faced and the long-standing ethnic, working-class values and traditions they drew upon, when after World War II the mines began to shut down. Some left the region, others commuted to work at a distance, still others struggled to find employment locally. The photographs, taken by George Harvan, a lifelong resident of the area and the son of a Slovak-born coal miner, document residents’ lives over the course of 50 years. An introductory essay offers a brief history of anthracite mining and the region and establishes a broader interpretive framework for the narratives and photographs.