?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(READING, PENNSYLVANIA--COAL MINING) Collection of 28 photographs surveying the industry of anthracite mining in Reading, highlighting the varying aspects of the grueling occupation. With 11 underground scenes portraying hardworking laborers, their faces smeared with black coal dust, working at depths of up to 1000 feet picking, loading, cutting, and breaking coal, as well as testing for gas leaks. Also represented are views of a miner's town and home; distinct stages of the post-mining process such as separation, sizing, and cleaning of the freshly mined anthracite at Locust Gap; loading vast amounts of coal into rail cars for its "exacting and efficient" preparation for market; and a bath for mine mules to "keep them in condition." Silver prints, the images measuring approximately 8x10 inches (20.3x25.4 cm.), and the reverse, each with a positively propagandistic caption letterpressed on recto. Circa 1930s
Apparently commissioned by the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, the photographs capture the industry at a transitional period, when electricity was introduced to the mining process and could increase output and efficiency greatly. Each image is accompanied by a detailed caption, each of which professes a positive outlook on the line of work we have since come to understand as harsh and debilitating to all on the front lines.
