Coke Manufacture. [Volume: 8, Issue: 1, 1888, pp. 55-56]

56

UNITED STATES ASSOCIATION OF

[VOL. 8,

was added. These several plants, together with 140 ovens, near
Dunbar, aggregating about 300 ovens, comprised all the works in
the region.
"The work of building ovens took a boom in 1872. and in 1876
there were 3,000 ovens in the region.' Three years later they had
increased to 4,000. Then came a sudden and unprecedented demand. Coke rose to fabulous prices, and fortunes were made in
a few months. This gave an impetus to the business which has
continued without entire abatement, sometimes under the most
trying circumstances to the present day. To illustrate the steady
growth of the industry, it might be added that the three years following 1879 more than doubled the number of ovens in the region,
the aggregate in 1882 being 8,400 against 4,000 in 1879. From
1882 to the present date, a period of six years, some of which have
been years of severe depression, the number of ovens has increased
steadily at the rate of nearly 800 per year, the aggregate now being
13,047, strung along the hills and valleys of the region from near
Latrobe, Pa., on the north, almost to Morgantown, W. Va., on the
south, a distance of fifty miles.
NOTE.-In the mineral resources of the United States, 1886,
Mr. Jos. D. Weeks gives a description of the manufacture of
coke, he says, that the total amount of coke produced in 1886 in
the 22,597 ovens which were then built, was 6,845,309 net tons,
10,688,972 net tons of coal being treated. Of this amount 4,180,521 net tons were made in the Connellsville region and 442,968
tons in the Upper Connellsville district.
FROM the reports of the British Inspectors of Mines for the year
1887, recently issued, we learn that during last year the aggregate
number of persons employed in and about the whole of the mines
in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland amounted to
568,026. The summary of the quantities and kinds of mineral
wrought in the different districts shows that the total quantity was
173,049,795 tons, of which 162,119,812 were coal and 7,569,918
iron ore, the rest being fire-clay, oil shale and other minerals, being a total increase of 3,042,836 tons, compared with the preceding year, the increase of coal being 4,601,330, with a decrease
of iron ore of 1,292,730 tons.