it play its part in the commercial development of
Pennsylvania. The failures and trials of the promoters of this company
were no less remarkable than was the great success that eventually
crowned the effort. In 1793 the Lehigh Coal Mine Company was organized
and purchased some ten thousand acres in the Mauch Chunk anthracite
region, nine miles from the Lehigh River. It then appropriated a sum
of money to build a road from the mines to the river in the expectation
that the State would improve the navigation of the waterway, for which,
it has already been noted, an appropriation had been made in 1791,
in accordance with the programme of the Society for Promoting the
Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation. Nothing was done, however,
to improve the river, and the company, after various attempts at
shipping coal to Philadelphia, gave up the effort and allowed the
property, which was worth millions, to lie idle. In 1807 the Lehigh
Coal Mine Company, in another effort to get its wares before the public,
granted to Rowland and Butland, a private firm, free right to operate
one of its veins of coal; but this operation also resulted in failure.
In 1813 the company made a third attempt and granted to a private
concern a lease of the entire property on the condition that
ten thousand bushels of coal should be taken to market annually.
Difficulties immediately made themselves apparent. No contractor could
be found who would haul the output to the Lehigh River for less than
four dollars a ton, and the man who accepted those terms lost money.
Of five barges filled at Mauch Chunk three went to pieces on the way
to Philadelphia. Although the contents of the other two sold for twenty
dollars a ton, the proceeds failed to meet expenses, and the operating
company threw up the lease.

But it happened that White and Hazard, the wire manufacturers who
purchased this Lehigh coal, were greatly pleased with its quality.
Believing that coal could be obtained more cheaply from Mauch Chunk than
from the mines along the Schuylkill, White, Hauto, and Hazard formed a
company, entered into negotiation with the owners of the Lehigh mines,
and obtained the lease of their properties for a period of twenty years
at an annual rental of one ear of corn. The company agreed, moreover, to
ship every year at least forty thousand bushels of coal to Philadelphia
for its own consumption, to prove the value of the property.

White and his partners immediately a