Technology Keeps Mining Industry Alive : Coal: Robotic equipment helps vastly increase output with a diminishing work force.

West Virginia, a name often synonymous with coal, is producing more coal with fewer miners than in the days when coal was king of the mountains.

Today, robotic mining equipment and huge shear blades have replaced the 16-ton-a-day miner made famous in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s 1950s ballad. A modern miner produces at least 19.8 tons daily in West Virginia.

Peak employment in West Virginia’s coal-mining industry came in 1940 when 130,457 men dug 126.6 million tons of coal from the earth.

But the state produced 144.9 million tons of coal in 1988, about 14% more coal than in 1940, with only a fraction of the miners.

In the 1880s and 1890s, railroad-borne European immigrants recruited from ships coming to New York filled instant coal camps in the hollows between West Virginia’s razor-backed southern mountains.

Although West Virginia’s coal employment dropped to 28,100 miners last year, many of those old coal towns stubbornly refuse to disappear, as so many other mining towns did in Colorado, Nevada and elsewhere.

West Virginia coal miners are used to a boom-and-bust cycle. Mining employment, for example, slumped to 42,557 in 1962, but bounced back to 62,982 in 1978.

This time, however, few expect mining employment ever to reach previous levels.

“The unfortunate part of this is a lot of those individuals are used to the mining industry of the past being cyclical in nature--it came back before and it will come back again,” said Gary White, president of the West Virginia Coal Assn.

“Unfortunately, I’m not sure that will happen again,” White said.

The irony of vastly increased output through a diminishing work force reflects the increasingly competitive, international nature of the coal industry, White said.

“The industry now participates in and has to compete in a world market,” White said. “Fortunately, West Virginia’s been able to maintain competitiveness in the world market through the use of technology.”

Battling Australian mines for the Japanese market, or Polish mines for the European market, American mining companies have cut their work forces to the bone.

Remote-controlled, continuous mining machines have replaced machines in which men were close to the face of the coal as the continuous mining drums with spiked teeth ripped at the earth.

State Energy Commissioner George Dials said the remote-controlled machines can be operated by a miner well back from the face, who is thus safer in the event of a roof collapse. The machine takes a larger chunk of the earth than earlier machines and it can move much quicker.

In addition, many mines now have equipment that can tear a larger chunk of the face at one time.

This mining strategy has reduced the number of men needed to operate the equipment and has cut the safety hazard, Dials said. West Virginia leads the nation in remote-controlled mining operations.

West Virginia’s work force is another factor in the reduced levels of employment. No longer are they the illiterate, strong-backed men Ford sang about.

Miners are better paid, technically skilled and well-trained specialists who often operate huge and advanced mining equipment. They have come a long way since the stereotypical days of hand-shoveling coal onto donkey-pulled wagons.

In addition, Dials said, 1989’s production is substantially ahead of that of 1988--which was the state’s 17th most productive year since West Virginia’s creation in 1863 and the most productive year since 1968.

He said West Virginia’s figures also reflect an industry trend. U.S. mining productivity increased by 78% from 1978 to 1987, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“It’s amazing,” Dials said. “It’s a combination of technology and training. We’ll never create jobs for those (lost). We need to have programs to offer other opportunities.”

The decline is clear. In the 1950s, coal miners fled to the auto factories of Detroit, then returned in the more prosperous times of the 1970s. Their children have been settling in other states in the 1980s.

For example, McDowell County, one of the state’s largest mining districts, had 98,467 people and its county seat of Welch had 6,545 people in 1950, state statistics show. In 1980, McDowell County had a population of 49,899 and Welch was a town of 4,300.

White said those working in the coal communities are enjoying stability and a higher standard of living. September figures from the Division of Employment Security showed mining wages totaled $766 a week.

But the figures also showed that McDowell County had an unemployment rate of 9.5%, sixth highest in the state.

West Virginia University economist William Miernyk said he does not understand how the older, small coal towns survive.

“If you were to apply a reactional economic process, these towns should disappear,” Miernyk said. “But that’s not the way people behave. Everyone is looking for that new furniture factory. Everybody wants some kind of substitute economic activity brought to them.”