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The “Old Company

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The “Old Company C o a l A g e Established 1911 McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, Inc. DEVOTED TO THE OPERATING, TECHNICAL A N D BUSINESS PROBLEMS OF THE COAL-MINING INDUSTRY SYDNEY A. HADE. BdUor New York, December, 1935 The “Old Company Hard conditions breed strong men, Strip mining at Lehigh Navigation lusty institutions and powerful traditions. properties is as old as the parent Lehigh No better illustration of this fact could be company, for that method of recovery was asked than the history of the Lehigh Navi­ employed at Summit Hill in 1820. Today, gation coal developments. Started more Lehigh Navigation stands as a leader in than a century ago by Josiah White and his anthracite stripping practices. When big associates after two earlier groups had aban­ shovels were regarded as suitable only for doned the enterprise, desperate courage and bituminous open-pit work, the Navigation bulldog persistence won success over difficul­ company demonstrated its faith in larger- ties which would have sapped the spirit of capacity buckets at Cranberry. less sturdy souls. W i t h t i m e there are some institutions Institutions, like men, however, which grow richer in years and poorer in either grow with the years or decay. To achievements. But Lehigh Navigation man­ management at Lehigh Navigation, the her­ agement never has regarded great age as a itage of Josiah White’s pioneering spirit and passport to lasting fame or glorious tradi­ resourcefulness has been received as some­ tion as a justification for present inaction. thing to emulate as well as to admire. On the contrary, the company has taken such Throughout its long career, Lehigh Naviga­ advantage of technical progress that today tion has shown a recuperative vitality that little remains but old rock dumps to attest has kept it a leader in anthracite colliery its long years of existence. Buildings and practice and an eagerness to break new plants suggest the most recent of develop­ ground matching the zeal of its founders. ments a product of the present decade rather than operations rooted in the early T he RECORD of pioneering develop­ half of the Nineteenth Century. ments in Josiah White’s day set new land­ marks; the records of his successors have The “Old Company,” in truth, is old been no less significant. As part of the de­ only in name. While the record of its past velopment of a system for recovering coal achievements, so sketchily indicated in the from heavily pitching seams, for example, preceding paragraphs, is impressive, the Lehigh Navigation drove the first mining manner in which it is meeting present-day tunnel in the United States. Some of the problems of production and merchandising earliest wet-cleaning processes were the is still more inspiring. These methods of the brain children of its men. Again, at Hauto, Lehigh Navigation Coal Co. are made the Lehigh Navigation pioneered in mine-mouth theme of this issue— Coal Age’s Fifteenth generation of electrical energy. Annual Model Mining Number. S. D. WARRINER J. B. WARRINER Chairman of the Board President LEHICH NAVIGATION COAL COMPANY FLASHBACKS In Old Company History EN \ EARS after the last gun in given the infant industry during the War but almost immediately became intrigued the Revolutionary War had been of 1812 when the Atlantic coast ports Tsilenced, a weary hunter moving with the future of water power and in­ w ere closed to V irginia and foreign coals. land waterways. through the deepening shadows of Pan­ Jacob Cist, Charles Miner and John Rob­ ther Creek valley stumbled over a strange The record of water development in inson were so impressed with the possi­ Pennsylvania had been a sorry one. Two black substance. Could Philip Ginter re­ bilities of expansion that they negotiated visit the scene of his 1791 discovery to­ canal projects had been abandoned and a lease with the discouraged" owners for no public improvement by navigation day he would find several thousand men the de\ elopment of the Lehigh properties. busy mining that same black substance had yet succeeded” in paying dividends in While tie new lessees escaped neither the State. Damming of large streams for shipment to markets which then were the perils of navigation nor, at the out­ wildernesses. He might even see—to his was looked upon with suspicion and dis­ set, the indifference of consumers, rising trust. "Here was a choice,” he said in eyes—lantastic machines taking great prices for charcoal spurred manufac­ bites out of the very ground where once his yellowing diary, ‘'between applying turers to make a real attempt to use my means and my talents in a way or he stumbled. For the trifling mishap of anthracite, and prospects for the venture this lonely Nimrod was to lead to the singular use to my fellow men and not brightened. With the end of the war, impair my estate and not, as I thought, commercial development of the Lehigh however, the bottom dropped out of thé anthracite field and the launching of a involve me in plague or trouble. Thus coal market and the business again was myself and others would be benefitted, es­ producing organization whose corporate abandoned. history goes back to 1820. pecially as I believed I had discovered In the meantime, fate was preparing the true plan of making dam^ secure bv While there is no record to indicate the way for the entrance of a new group that Philip Ginter’s vision could leap the the manner of laying the stone or material of pioneers who would pick up the broken on it instead of against it.” years, he did have a hazy idea that the threads and weave them into a more substance might be some of the new So Josiah White made his great deci­ lasting pattern of success. Early in life, sion. His first venture in the new field "stone coal” which had been used by a Josiah V hite, a sturdy Quaker lad from was the purchase of the Falls of Schuyl­ few blacksmiths and at the Carlisle ar­ Mt. Holly, N. J., had resolved that, if kill, for which he paid $14,000 in the senal during the late war. So he showed he could accumulate $40,000 by the time spring of 1810, only to discover that he his find to his friend Col. Jacob Weiss, he was 30, he would retire from active had jumped out of the frying pan into of Fort Allen, who was interested enough business, become a gentleman farmer and the fire and had jeopardized his for­ to take it to Philadelphia, where Ginter’s give full play to his suppressed inclina­ tune. Embarking into partnership with guess was confirmed. The next year, the tions for things mechanical. Apprenticed Erskine Hazard in a nail factory as one colonel and a group of associates which to the proprietor of a Philadelphia hard­ means of utilizing the falls, he wrylv included Robert Morris, financial angel ware shop at fifteen and the owner of a wrote that, when he needed low water, “I to the Revolution, banded together in the business in that line before he had at­ usually had high water.” Always eager Lehigh Coal Mine Co. and purchased tained his majority, Josiah reached his to experiment, he paid $21 for a ton of between eight and ten thousand acres of goal at the age of 28. He bought his farm, anthracite from the first arkload floated coal lands between Mauch Chunk and Tamaqua. River transportation costs Five of the seven active operations are concentrated in Panther valley ranging from S9 to $18 per ton for coal selling at the mines at SI to $2, the hazards of that form of transportation and deep-rooted consumer preferences for wood, British and Virginia coals caused the temporary abandonment of the proj­ ect a few months after the new company had built a road from the mines to the Lehigh River near Mauch Chunk. Although some improvements in navi­ gation were made in 1798, the Lehigh Coal Mine Co. did not resume opera­ tions until 1803. Only two of the six arks floated toward Philadelphia that year, however, reached destination, and great difficulty was experienced in selling these cargoes. The new coal received its first real boost when Judge Fell in 1808 demonstrated that it could be burned in an open grate. Further impetus was December, 1935 — COAL AGE 485 most conspicuous.” And in 1825, the com­ down the Lehigh River for use in the fac­ incorporated under that name by a special pany shipped 28,393 tons to market. tory furnace. Following traditional act of the State Legislature on Feb. 13, Steadily increasing demand, however, methods with other fuels without suc­ 1822. Over a century later (in 1930), did not mean that all the troubles of this cess, a workman closed the furnace door the mining and sales branches were sepa­ pioneering company were at an end. In in disgust and started for home; return­ rated from the parent organization to ing some time later for a coat he had for­ form the Lehigh Navigation Coal Co. 1842 a great flood wiped out practically gotten, he found the hopeless fire red Although there are records of scat­ all of the canal work which had been built hot. And anthracite became irrevocably tered production and shipments of hard some years earlier between White Haven linked with navigation in Josiah White’s coal going back to 1807, the tonnage was and Mauch Chunk, and it cost yearly dreams. small and the real history of the commer­ $1,000,000 to repair the damage.
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