312 COAL OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
and widely-extended manufacturing establishments 
of the West. Without coal they could not exist. 
It thus constitutes the lifespring of western Penn- 
sylvania, and the pedestal of her great manufactu- 
ring emporium, Pittsburg. This city alone and it» 
environs, in 1835, contained 120 steam-engines for 
the various manufactures of iron, steel, glass, cot- 
ton, salt, brass, white-lead, flour, oil, leather, &c. 
These engines consume annually nearly 3,000,000 
bushels of coal. 
The coal consumed for every purpose in uni 
about Pittsburg has been estimated at 7,665,000' 
bushels, or 255,500 tons. At four cents a bushel, the 
price now paid in Pittsburg, it would amount to 
306,513 dollars. Besides this, great quantities are 
shipped to Cincinnati, New-Orleans, and the inter- 
mediate places, where it is sold for from 5 to 10' 
dollars a ton. Large quantities of it are also con- 
sumed in the western counties of Pennsylvania in 
the manufacture of salt, as there are more than 100 
salt-manufacturing establishments in that region, 
and many others going into operation, which pro- 
duce annually more than 1,000,000 bushels of salt, 
and consume 5,000,000 bushels of coal. The total 
amount of anthracite and bituminous coal at pres- 
ent derived from the coal-beds of Pennsylvania 
cannot fall much short of 2,000,000* tons annually, 
being about one twelfth as much as the total annual 
product of all the coal-fields of Great Britain, nearly 
half as great as that of all the rest of Europe, and 
about equal to that of Prance. 
These facts, elucidating the immense mineral 
wealth of the great and justly called keystone state, 
open to the imagination a long vista of power and 
* The coUng process is now understood in Pennsylvania, and 
it is found that the bituminous coal is quite as susceptible of 
this operation, and produces as good coke as that of Great 
Britain. Indeed, it is now used to considerable extent in some 
of her iron manufactures. 
