This depressing illustration appeared in an 1874 edition of Harper’s Weekly Magazine. At the time, the United States was in the early stages of what is today known as “The Long Depression,” one of the worst financial downturns in American history.

The scene depicted shows poor residents of a city in the American Northeast at a coal dealer as snow falls on a frigid day. In the cold winter months, prices of coal would skyrocket as supplies dwindled, leaving many with terrible choices to make. Stay warm or eat? It was a bleak time.

The Harper’s Weekly illustration was accompanied by the following illustration:

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Our touching illustration… represents a scene which may be witnessed almost every winter day in all our large cities, where the poor are dependent for warmth upon the scanty supplies of coal which they can beg or buy.

Unable to lay in a stock sufficient to last even for a few days, they have to procure it by the pailful, or less, of small dealers who buy a ton or two to be doled out in scanty measures at a large profit on the original cost.

None to pay so dear for this necessity as those who can afford to pay the least. Prosperous families, who store away 20 or 30 tons of coal in their cellars during the summer months, when the price is low, can have no conception of the misery implied in buying coal “by the quart,” as is sometimes done by the very poor.

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Read more Coal Region history from the 1870s

“A Blazing Coal Mine” – Susan Dickinson’s account of the 1870s Empire Mine Fire

Illustration of threats against non-union mineworkers in Schuylkill County| 1871

Illustration shows Pennsylvania mineworkers during payday at the mines | 1873

Sketches of the Coal Region from 1877

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