A century ago, coal executives promised efficiency, modernization, and economic stability.
What they delivered instead was consolidation, mechanization, and the quiet disappearance of entire communities across Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal fields.
In my latest piece for RealClearPennsylvania, I explore how the construction of massive centralized breakers in the late 1920s shuttered collieries, eliminated jobs, and helped accelerate the collapse of the Coal Region’s economy.
Towns like Mahanoy City and Shamokin saw mines close almost overnight.
Today, warehouses and fulfillment centers sit on reclaimed mine land, often as the largest employers in these same communities. Automation and artificial intelligence now hover over those jobs just as electrification and strip mining once did over coal jobs.
Proposed data centers – energy-intensive and labor-light – suggest another turn toward consolidation without long-term community security.
History does not offer perfect parallels, but it does offer perspective. When decisions are made far from the communities they affect, the consequences can echo for generations.
Read the full article here
(Photograph: St. Nicholas Central Breaker in Schuylkill County in 1938-39 – Jack Delano photograph in Library of Congress)
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It’s certainly your decision to make but I would prefer if you stuck to history
History informs decision-making today. Sharing these connections and parallels in our past can help guide decision-makers today, but only if there is an awareness of this history.
My father and grandfather worked many of these mines for many years. I’m grateful to them for forcing me to get an education and move on. While I enjoyed growing up in the anthracite coal region, unfortunately the better jobs were found far away. The stories of what it was like back was enough to make me study very hard. With AI and physical AI, the same unemployment will occur not just in private industry but also in government. We need to provide jobs training for the new technology revolution.
With the onset of AI and physical AI, many industries will undergo massive labor cuts; not just in private industry but also in government facilities. Unless the government and private industry provides retraining programs to shore up