TABLE 129.—Value of anthracite shipped, 1922–23, by regions and sizes—Continued

Includes $5,288,017, value of "range" coal.

• Includes $1,342,528, value of "birdseye coal."

d

Includes $20,179,951, value of "range" coal. SPOT PRICES AND AVERAGE RECEIPTS F. 0. B. MINES

For purposes of reference, the current prices of company and independent stove and buckwheat No. 3, f. o. b. mines, as quoted by Coal Age in the New York market, are charted in Figure 30. The average receipts on all sizes are shown for each region in Table 130.

TABLE 130.-Average value per gross ton of anthracite shipped, local sales, colliery

fuel, and total production, by regions, 1918–1923 •

• Value given for shipments is value at which coal left possession of producing company f. o. b. mines and does not include margins of separately incorporated selling companies.

LABOR STATISTICS

No significant change in the average number of employees in the anthracite mines occurred during 1923. The total number of men and boys, excluding officials and office force, was 157,743, against 156,849 in 1922 (Table 131). The average number of days worked in 1923 was 268, slightly less than in 1921. The working year was shortened by the brief suspension in September at the expiration of the wage agreement, the effects of which are shown in the time lost because of labor controversies (Table 132).

TABLE 131.—Number of employees and days worked in the anthracite field, 1922–23,

by regions

• Operators were requested to give number of “all miners (contract, consideration, and company) and their laborers."

• Formerly presented under caption “ Freshly-mined coal.” A considerable tonnage of culm-bank coal, however, is handled in the breakers.

Includes a comparatively small number of washery employees who could not be separated from breaker employoes,

TABLE 132.—Strikes, suspensions, and lockouts in the Pennsylvania anthracite

region, 1919–1923

The use of undercutting machines, now so general in the bituminous-coal mines, has made little progress in the face of the greater natural difficulties in the anthracite mines. Machines are employed only in the gently dipping beds of the Wyoming region and Sullivan County, and the total mined by machine in 1923–1,079,055 tonswas only 1.4 per cent of the breaker output.

Strip mining, on the other hand, has assumed greater importance in relation to the total output in the anthracite than in the bituminous-coal mines. The anthracite mined by stripping in 1923 was 2,020,623 tons, or 2.6 per cent of the total breaker product; the corresponding figure for bituminous-coal mining was 2.1 per cent.

TABLE 133.-Pennsylvania anthracite mined by machines, 1921-1923

Table 134.—Pennsylvania anthracite recovered from steam-shovel strip pits,

1921-1923

In 1923, 60 dredges reported to the Geological Survey a production of 853,900 gross tons, with a value of $811,065. The figures are possibly incomplete. The output of the dredges is shown in the tables of this report, apportioned between the Schuylkill, Lehigh, and Wyoming regions, but this apportionment is necessarily arbitrary, for many of the dredges are working at points distant from the mines. The recapitulation by rivers in Táble 135 will indicate more clearly where the dredge coal is recovered.

The seasonal nature of dredging is shown by the table of number of employees in each month (Table 136). In June, when the maximum was reached, the number of men at work was 504, or two and a half times as many as the minimum in January.

TABLE 135.- Anthracite produced by dredges, 1923, by rivers