Brief
History of the Rochester
and Pittsburgh
Coal and Iron Company
Early History
The
Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company (hereafter referred to as the Company,
Coal Company, or the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company), was financed
by Walston H. Brown and Adrian Iselin, both New York financiers.
In 1881 it was incorporated by the Iselin family in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
The Company's first mines were located in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania,
and most of the coal from these mines was used to produce coke. One of the
coke producing operations, the Walston mine, had the longest string of
coke ovens in the world at the time. Five-hundred men were employed in the
ovens alone. The Company grew rapidly and by the turn of the century it
purchased many pieces of land in several western Pennsylvania counties
including parcels that totaled 40,000 acres in Indiana County. In addition
to the purchase of land, the Company also purchased several small
railroads, which they consolidated into the larger Buffalo, Rochester, and
Pittsburgh Railroad. Ownership of the railroad enabled the Coal Company to
quickly, cheaply, and efficiently transport coal to Buffalo, Rochester,
and other northern markets. By obtaining track rights between Indiana and
Pittsburgh over the Baltimore and Ohio rail lines, the Coal Company was
able to expand their operations south to Pittsburgh's growing iron and
steel industries.
Mine
Acquisition and Subsidiary Companies
As
the Coal Company developed its own mines, it also purchased the mines of
other local coal companies. Numerous smaller companies were involved in
coal production in Indiana County during this period. For example, in
Montgomery Township, there were no fewer than twenty-nine actively working
mines in 1909. During this period, it was not uncommon for corporations to
set up complex systems of subsidiary companies to protect the parent
company from potential bankruptcy and to insure that all financial tax
advantages were exploited. Executives of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal
Company frequently served as executives in its subsidiary organizations.
For example, Lucius W. Robinson was simultaneously president of the
Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company and of the Jefferson and Clearfield
Coal and Iron Company. The following, compiled from different sources by
the author, is a listing of companies which the Rochester and Pittsburgh
Coal Company purchased or in which they had controlling interests: Adrian Furnace
Co., Bell, Lewis and Yates Mining Co., Brush Creek Mining Co., Buffalo,
Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, Coal Run
Mining Co., Cowanshannock Coal and Coke Co., Buffalo, Rochester and
Pittsburgh Railway, Helvetia Coal Mining Co., Jefferson and Clearfield
Coal Co., Kent Coal Mining Co.,
Jefferson and Clearfield Coal Mining Co., Jefferson Supply Co., Mahoning Investment Co.,
Mahoning and Jefferson Supply Co., Pittsburgh Gas Co., Plum Creek Coal
Co., Punxsutawny Furnance, and Tide Coal Mining Co. In addition, Lucius W. Robinson,
a Coa Company executive privately owned the Coal
Run Mining Company which developed the
Young Township community of Coal Run in 1912 located adjacent to McIntyre.
Expansion/Development
in Young Township, Indiana County
At
the turn of the 20th century the Coal Company began to
systematically purchase land in Young Township from established families,
from other smaller coal companies, and from coal speculators. Courthouse
documents reveal that prices varied from a low of $20 per acre to a high
of approximately $60. In 1905 a parcel totaling approximately 4000 acres
was purchased by a speculator and resold to the Coal Company. Other sizeable land purchases followed, acreage was accumulated,
mines opened, and then towns were developed. Because there were not enough
local native-born men to work in the mines, the Coal Company looked to
Europe as a source of inexpensive labor. A 1902 letter written by Lucius
W. Robinson, an executive of the Coal Company, to an agent, states, "We
want mainly good Italians, Polanders and Hungarians. We do not want any
colored help, or Irish, under any circumstances, nor do we want any hard
coal strikers."
Individually
and collectively, the Coal Company towns were populated by a wide spectrum of
immigrants from many places including Italy, Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Romania, Lithuania, Austria-Hungary,
and Prussia. The Coal Company permeated various aspects of the lives of
the miner and his family. For example, although they were not obligated to
do so, many shopped
in the company store. Miner's children attended schools that were built
with funds from the company, and coal, usually free, was given to the
school for heating classrooms. Although some homes were privately owned,
most families lived in rented company-built houses. The most popular form
of recreation in many coal mining towns was watching company-sponsored
baseball games.
Although
the early executives of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company are long
dead, there are reminders of their existence in the names of several
Indiana County towns. The town of Iselin was named after Adrian Iselin.
Two towns, Waterman and Luciusboro, were named after another Coal Company
executive, Lucius Waterman Robinson. The town of Ernest was named after
the grandson of Adrian Iselin. The Iselin family was from Switzerland and
thus the coal town of Lucerne was named after the Swiss city of Luzerne.
The
1920s, 1930s, 1940s
The
Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company and other coal operators faced
numerous concerns during these decades. Following World War I, there was a
serious decline in coal operator's profits. In order to offset financial
losses, companies attempted to reduce existing wages. In 1927 Indiana
County coal companies attempted to lower wages to $6 a day. This period
was characterized by strikes of unionized miners, the use of the Coal and
Iron Police, the issuing of injunctions by procoal judges, and the hiring
of nonunion miners. After the onset of the Depression, by 1932 bituminous coal production fell to its lowest rate since 1904. During this
period in McIntyre and in other company towns, miners worked only a few
days a week if they were fortunate. In 1930, the combined number of men
working in the two McIntyre mines totaled only 30. Credit was extended by
the company store to the most needy families. In the late 1930s and
into the war years, the demand for coal increased. Realizing the potential
loss of miners to the military and the increasing demand for coal, the
Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company modernized by installing new
mechanical loading equipment in all its mines.
Sale
of the 17 Remaining Coal Company Towns
By the late 1940s many Indiana County
mines, including those of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company were
nearly exhausted, although large quantities of coal were now obtained through
strip mining. Underground mining continued for a while in the Company's
towns. The first of McIntyre's two mines closed in 1952, and the second
one in 1963. It was clearly becoming obvious that strip mining was more
profitable than mining underground. Because surface or strip mining no longer required
company housing, in 1947 seventeen remaining towns including McIntyre, and
their water rights, were sold by the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company to the Kovalchick
Company in Indiana, Pennsylvania, for $890,000. The names of the
seventeen towns, located in
Indiana, Armstrong, Clearfield, and Cambria counties were: McIntyre, Coal
Run, Iselin, Waterman, Lucernmines, Aultman, Ernest, Tidesdale, Coy,
Luciusboro, Fulton Run, Nu Mine, Yatesboro, Margaret, Helvetia, Twin
Rocks, and Yatesboro Lots.
The above information was compiled from Richard H. Quin, Indiana County:
An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites (Washington,
D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1993), and
from Eileen Mountjoy Cooper, The Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company: The First
One Hundred Years (Indiana, Pennsylvania: Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal
Company, 1982). The names of the
remaining 17 Coal Company towns provided by Stan Wass, Clarksburg, PA. The list
of the Coal Company subsidiaries was compiled from various sources by the
author.
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