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Pennsylvania's Northern Region had moved into full-bore activity, with the elongated strip of anthracite coal deposits representing the major mining location of the entire country. Soft bituminous mined in other parts of the state, previously in common use, had been easier to fire up, but improved procedures for igniting anthracite were developed. Newly discovered usages and benefits had increased the hard coal's value, and record demands from consumers pushed the Northern Region field into all-time peak production at this time. In the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, the Wilkes-Barre community had become the focal point of America's coal mining with its 29-foot thickness of the Mammoth, or Baltimore, vein on the west side of the Susquehanna. Several miles to the north lay the little village of Nebraska. 
coal miner families at Wilkes-Barre Extended coal mining in America had begun only three decades earlier, and the endeavor grew into a very substantial industry. An ordinarily long workday for the common coal miner was dirty, difficult, and dangerous in the harsh stifling environs at the depths of a Pennsylvania mine. With a lack of fresh air and sunlight, company employees ordinarily inhaled coal dust while trying to function in semi-darkness. Lives of workers were constantly being put at risk, and most fatalities were caused when the overhead layer of a coal seam collapsed upon the trapped laborers. The miner's hazard-filled occupation proved to be more treacherous and strenuous than the experiences of an average combat soldier in wartime. Job-hunters seeking the toughest career available would fail to find it until they ventured down into the mines. 
coal mining at Wilkes-Barre Above ground at the mine site was the collier, a huge building more commonly known as a "breaker," where fresh coal from the mine was elevated to the highest point. The coal was consequently dropped through some arrangement of sieves inside the breaker in order to sort the pieces by size before loading them into railcars for transport. 
coal breaker at Wilkes-Barre But the big coal operation wasn't the only mining interest concerning Americans. Back on January 24, before JOHN TAYLOR's arrival in the USA, James Wilson Marshall disclosed that he had found tiny gold nuggets at Sutter's Mill near Coloma, California, an area the U. S. was trying to wrest from Mexico. Adventurous opportunists in the organized states became entranced with the bonanza gold discovery out in the contested territory of the west coast. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War later in 1848, and the U. S. obtained the territories of California and New Mexico by paying the Mexican government $15,000,000. |
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