TABLE 12.-Bituminous coal produced in 1913, 1920, and 1923

• Production in 1918; used for comparison because Alabama was affected by a strike in 1920. › Total for 1920. The column does not add because of the substitution of the 1918 figure for Alabama.

The changes from 1920 to 1923 become clearer still when the States are grouped into broad producing areas, as shown in Table 13. TABLE 13.-Bituminous coal produced in 1913, 1920, and 1923, by groups of States "

• Does not include production in Alaska, California, Georgia, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, and Oregon. › Production in 1918 used for comparison because Alabama was affected by a strike in 1920.

YEARS OF RECORD PRODUCTION

Although 1923 failed to establish a new record in output for the country as a whole, there were a number of States that established new high marks that year. Conspicuous among them were the

nonunion States of the middle and southern Appalachians-Alabama, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Alaska also set a new mark, and North Dakota continued its rapid growth. This State had reached a new maximum in 1922 in spite of the strike and pushed its output still higher in 1923. Of the other important producing States the greater number reached their maximum performance in 1920 or in the war years 1917 and 1918. Certain of the older districts, however, have been declining in recent years, and to find the year of highest output for Tennessee it is necessary to go back to 1910; for Michigan, Maryland, and Arkansas to 1907; for Texas to 1913; and for Georgia to 1903. The group including California, Idaho, and Oregon reached its highest level in 1880.

TABLE 14.-Coal produced in 1923, by States, and highest recorded production

Pennsylvania remains easily the leading producer of bituminous coal. Indeed, if the output of anthracite is included, the State produces more coal than its three nearest rivals put together.

· In 1923 West Virginia was easily second, though in 1918 it had been closely pressed by Illinois. Illinois retains its position as third in rank. But while there has been no shift among the three leading producers, among the other States that mine large tonnages there have been numerous changes in rank within the last 10 years, as shown by Figure 35. Ohio, easily the fourth in 1913 and 1918, has now dropped to fifth place. Kentucky's extremely rapid growth has carried it to fourth place in Ohio's stead.

COAL

A notable feature of the diagram is the general loss in relative standing of the States of the Western Interior field. Iowa dropped from tenth to twelfth place in the 10 years, Kansas from twelfth to fourteenth, Missouri from fourteenth to fifteenth. It is, perhaps, significant that these States are strongholds of unionism and have had to pay both high day rates and high tonnage scales. But the relative cost of union and nonunion labor is not the only factor involved in the shift, for union Indiana changed places with nonunion. Alabama in this period of 10 years. Colorado, where the hold of unionism has never been as strong as in many other States, lost in relative standing, and Wyoming, which is completely organized, on the contrary, advanced. Other States whose relative standing improved were Virginia, Tennessee, and Utah.

In Table 11 is presented for convenient reference the output for each State in each of the last four years.

1918

1923

Illinois

-Kentucky

-Ohio

-Indiana

Alabama

-Virginia

-Colorado

-Wyoming

Tennessee

-Iowa

-Utah

Kansas

Missouri

FIGURE 35.-Rank of principal States in production of bituminous coal in 1913, 1918, and 1923

PRODUCTION BY FIELDS

The Geological Survey receives many requests for information on production by trade fields as distinct from States and counties. At the request of the United States Coal Commission the Survey retabulated its records for 1920 and 1921 according to the 92 fields into which the commission divided the bituminous coal mines. The results are shown in Table 15.

The commission's grouping of the fields was made under the direction of C. E. Lesher and R. A. Walter, primarily with a view to its studies of cost of production. The fields are accurately delimited by metes and bounds on pages 2034-2052 of its report. Because all the fields adopted did not coincide with generally accepted trade districts they were designated by number rather than by name. For the convenience of the reader of Table 15, however, the trade name most nearly corresponding to the boundaries established by the commission is also listed.

TABLE 15.—Bituminous coal produced in the several fields adopted by the United States Coal Commission, 1920-21 •

[Exclusive in both years of product of country coal banks and wagon mines shipping by rail]

A discrepancy will be found between the total of these figures and the total for the country given in other tables. For 1920 it amounts to 4,934,000 tons and arises from the fact that in this table the wagon mines and country banks are not included. The slight difference in 1921-less than 2,000 tons for the country as a whole-arises from the fact that the tonnages are rounded to the nearest thousand.

Arkansas. .do.

TABLE 15.-Bituminous coal produced in the several fields adopted by the United States Coal Commission, 1920–21 •— -Continued

A discrepancy will be found between the total of these figures and the total for the country given in other tables. For 1920 it amounts to 4,934,000 tons and arises from the fact that in this table the wagon mines and country banks are not included. The slight difference in 1921-less than 2,000 tons for the country as a whole-arises from the fact that the tonnages are rounded to the nearest thousand.

On account of differences in classification these totals differ slightly from those given in other tables of this report. Included under "Unclassified."

WEEKLY AND MONTHLY PRODUCTION

SOURCE OF THE DATA

The following tables form a summary of the statistics of the weekly and monthly production of anthracite and bituminous coal that are first published in the Geological Survey's weekly coal reports. The figures given are estimates based upon daily and weekly reports of cars of coal and beehive coke loaded by the principal railroads. They are afterwards revised to agree with the results of the annual statistical reports from the producers of coal, and therefore the figures here given differ slightly from the estimates originally issued in the weekly reports.

To check the estimates of monthly production of anthracite an additional source of information is available in the monthly reports of shipments made by the Anthracite Bureau of Information.

WEEKLY PRODUCTION OF BITUMINOUS COAL

In the bituminous branch of the industry the year 1923 was notably free of those violent extremes in weekly production that have characterized some other years in the modern history of coal mining. The