A newspaper photograph from 1972 of Norman J. Wolfe (1919-1992), an independent coal miner, a.k.a. bootlegger, standing at the entrance to his Sharp Mountain Coal Mine near Tremont, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Wolfe was featured in an article by Tom Tiede that appeared in the Burlington County (New Jersey) Times on October 18, 1972. The article was re-printed in the Pine Grove Herald, October 26, 1972, along with the above photo, the caption of which states the following:
ONE-MAN-GANG – Norm Wolfe and his partner are the entire work force, and also the entire management, at the Sharp Mountain Coal Mine. Big mining has moved out of the area, but bootleggers continue to take coal from the ground.
PRESENT-DAY COAL MINING IN THE TREMONT AREA
TREMONT, Pennsylvania (NEA) — The Sharp Mountain Coal Mine is a big hole in a hill surrounded by dead logs, a leaning shack and several inches of anthracite goo. It looks deserted. But wait. A noise in the tunnel. Rumble. rumble. The crew is coming. There he is. The crew. Norman Wolfe, 53, all 5 feet, 4 inches, 119 pounds of him.
Wolfe is the one-man gang of the Sharp Mountain Coal Mine. he is the pick man, the shovel man, the fellow who fires the dynamite, the carpenter, the loader, the unloader. Norman Wolfe, 53, 5 feet, 4 inches, 119 pounds. He is also the owner — and, along with a partner, Charles Lengle, he is the whole show in what is a rare, admirable tribute to a man’s cussed determination: bootleg coal mining.
Years ago, this area around Tremont, 465 square milers, was one of the most bristling mining areas in the nation. Fifty-eight large mines were operating at one juncture, employing 35,000 workers. Time were good. Coal was inexhaustible. Towns like Minersville and Coaldale were established. Places like Mt. Carbon were named in appreciation of the great black gifts from mother earth.
But enough becomes too much, as it often does. Mine owners become oppressive. Unions become greedy. And as the cost of taking the coal out, safely, increased, the number of people willing to pay the price decreased. In short, the bottom fell out of the richest anthracite lode in the world. Mines closed by the score. Workers moved away by the thousands. Nobody has been hired in deep mining here in the last decade. Major companies avoid the region like it had a high water level. About the only real big mining left is the relentless (tear and scar) dragnet operation known as stripping.
The industry is dear.
And yet, here is Norm Wolfe, what there is of him, buried in overalls, blackened with dust, peaking out from under a lamp-hat with his pick and shovel. One of a relative handful of men still scratching a living from an industry that was.
“Hello, Norm.”
Nod.
“I’m a reporter.”
Nod.
“Mind if I ask some questions?”
Nod.
Wolfe doesn’t say much. But then, there’s a reason. He’s too busy to yak. As in few other endeavors, time to the coal bootlegger is money. Unlike other mining industries, anthracite digging is still a grunt and groan operation. With mechanization, a soft miner averages 70 tons of produce a day. With grunts and groans (hard coal mining doesn’t lend itself to mechanization) an anthracite operator is lucky to get to 10. So. Don’t dally. Up at 5, in the mine before 7, drill, blast, dig, load, knock down, pick it up, and cart it away for the daily bread.
Not surprisingly, the bread isn’t always daily for bootleg miners. Wolfe, for example, gets $8 a ton for his efforts. If his partner is working, they usually pull out between 15-20 tons. But that’s not banking money. out of it, they must pay a landlord 60 cents a ton for the right to dig in his mountain, they must pay a driver a living wage to cart the coal to the preparation plant, they must pay for the beams to support the drift, for the supplies to equip the premises, for the dynamite, for the generator, for the air equipment, for everything. “I’m lucky if I make $5,000 to $6,000 a year,” says Wolfe, spitting out black phlegm. “You don’t get much digging this stuff.”
Indeed. You don’t get much money. You don’t get much anything. Except, too often, grief.
Still and all, despite the hardships, the bootleggers survive. For the present. An there is no danger, at least, that the earth will turn against them too. Clyde Machamer, president of the Independent Miners Union, says the anthracite lode in Pennsylvania is still enormous. “There are 7 to 10 billion recoverable tons of it left right here below our feet. That’s a couple centuries, still of steady work.”
Norman James Wolfe was born October 27, 1919, in Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. In the 1940 census, his occupation was farmer working on the family farm. In 1941, when he registered for the World War II Draft, his occupation was laborer and his employer was Caleb Lentz, in the rural area around Pine Grove. He married Sallie Jamison and with her had several children, including a daughter Rose Wolfe, who died in infancy in 1947; a son, Carl L. Wolfe; and a daughter, Betty [Wolfe] Bressler. Norm Wolfe died on September 16, 1992, and was survived by his wife, son and daughter, and three step-daughters.
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News article from Newspapers.com.
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