The Face of Decline

by Dublin, Thomas; Licht, Walter

• ISBN13: 9780801484735
• ISBN10: 0801484731
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-11-17
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

The anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania once prospered. Today, very little mining or industry remains, although residents have made valiant efforts to restore the fabric of their communities. In The Face of Decline, the noted historians Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht offer a sweeping history of this area over the course of the twentieth century. Combining business, labor, social, political, and environmental history, Dublin and Licht delve into coal communities to explore grassroots ethnic life and labor activism, economic revitalization, and the varied impact of economic decline across generations of mining families. The Face of Decline also features the responses to economic crisis of organized capital and labor, local business elites, redevelopment agencies, and state and federal governments. Dublin and Licht draw on a remarkable range of sources: oral histories and survey questionnaires; documentary photographs; the records of coal companies, local governments, and industrial development corporations; federal censuses; and community newspapers. The authors examine the impact of enduring economic decline across a wide region but focus especially on a small group of mining communities in the region's Panther Valley, from Jim Thorpe through Lansford to Tamaqua. The authors also place the anthracite region within a broader conceptual framework, comparing anthracite's decline to parallel developments in European coal basins and Appalachia and to deindustrialization in the United States more generally.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Introduction	1	(8)
1. Creating the Anthracite Region	9	(26)
From Prehistoric Times to 1900
2. Apogee and Descent	35	(23)
The Anthracite Region in the Early Twentieth Century
3. The Anthracite Miners' New Deal	58	(27)
The Thirties
4. Reprieve and Final Collapse, 1940-1970	85	(29)
Capital and Labor Respond
5. Industrial Development Efforts	114	(22)
Community and Governmental Responses
6. Personal Responses to Decline	136	(21)
Fathers and Mothers, 1945-1990
7. Personal Responses to Decline	157	(14)
Sons and Daughters, 1945-1990
8. Legacies	171	(30)
Appendixes	201	(14)
Notes	215	(40)
Selected Bibliography	255	(12)
Acknowledgments	267	(2)
Index	269