Anthracite Coal and Pig Iron.

The industrialization of the Northern states was fueled, literally, by rich supplies of key raw materials. In the 1820s substantial anthracite coal fields opened in eastern Pennsylvania, and as canals and eventually railroads reached into the region, substantial supplies became available to the nation's burgeoning mills, forges, factories, and railways. By the mid 1840s annual production of the Pennsylvania mines topped two million tons, and the price had dropped to three dollars a ton. This output in turn supplied American manufacturers and railroads not only with inexpensive fuel for steam power, but also with plentiful domestic stocks of iron. In the 1840s and 1850s the number of anthracite coal blast furnaces proliferated, rising from 60 to 121 between 1849 and 1853 alone. With average workforces of eighty and capital assets typically close to $100,000, these operations were not especially large, but their...