Credit: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
The Great Depression devastated Pennsylvania's bituminous and anthracite coal industries. Between 1926 and 1933, operators cut Pennsylvania anthracite production by one-third and laid off nearly 67,000 miners, almost 40 percent of the workforce. In northeastern Pennsylvania, unemployed miners worked illegal "bootleg" mines on company-owned land. By the mid-1930s, bootleg mining accounted for 10 percent of the total anthracite produced. In 1941, it still accounted for one out of four jobs in Schuylkill and Northumberland Counties.
