287. Anthracite or the ridge country of eastern Pennsylvania, be tween the Susquehanna and the Delaware rivers, the rocks were folded in such a way that (Fig. 245) the coal was pressed until it became hard. Coal that has become hard through pressure is anthracite. Layer's of coal can be found in western Pennsylvania where the rocks are still nearly level (Fig. 249). The coal there is still soft or bituminous, because it has not been pressed so much as has the anthracite. The scattered areas of anthracite between Reading and Scranton contain the best anthracite in America. Europe has none better.
288. The anthracite this one small section of eastern Pennsylvania we get nearly all the hard coal used in the entire United States. Here one sees big towers (Fig. 246) with wheels at the top. Cables pass over the wheels, and run into a large hole in the ground. Fastened to the cable is a little car that every morning runs down into the ground, carrying a load of men, who come out at evening black and grimy from digging coal. The coal is carried to the surface of the earth in little cars that are pulled up by the same engine that lets the men down.
While thousands of miners have been digging and blasting beneath the earth, other thousands of men have been busy in the big buildings called breakers, where the coal is cracked and sorted into sizes. Hundreds of boys pick pieces of slate out of the coal, so that there may be good, pure coal to burn. The great centers of this mining industry are Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Shamokin, and Potts ville. So much coal is dug in these regions that eight railroads are used to carry it away to the cities and towns of the eastern and central parts of the United States.
289. Future of the anthracite fields.— What will be the future of a community depending on anthracite mines? Before all the coal is used, we may expect the people living there to turn gradually to manu facturing. Perhaps they will be able to run their factories by elec tricity brought by wire from water-power plants, and from coal-power plants in the larger coal fields of western Pennsylvania, which will not be so quickly exhausted.