Abstract

Coal Waste in Pennsylvania

A few days' systematic driving through the anthracite region of Eastern Pennsylvania gives one a vivid and oppressive sense of the reckless waste with which the present generation is using up the reserve stores of coal that have so long awaited the advent of man in this desolate region. Without question the coal deposits originally covered the whole area from Blue Ridge to the bituminous coal-fields of the western part of the State. But the crumpling up of the earth's crust which elevated the region above the sea, occurred so long before the beginning of the modern era of civilization, or even the advent of man upon the earth, that ninety-nine-one-hundredths of all the original deposits in the central and eastern parts of the State have been removed by the slow but ceaseless activity of nature's erosive agencies.