The United States’ 250th birthday is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the people and industries that made America. And there is no debate, the coal industry and America’s miners have played an extraordinary role in building the nation. From powering the engines of commerce, to fueling the industries that won two world wars and built the infrastructure and prosperity that has driven the American dream, coal has been there at every turn.
There is an embarrassment of riches of fascinating and inspiring moments for America’s coal legacy, but coal’s importance during and just after the second World War deserves a close-up.
Answering the Call
As the United States headed towards war in 1940, the coal industry was still trying to recover from the blow of the Great Depression. But the colossal energy and material needs of the war effort would soon require an extraordinary mobilization and push U.S. production to record levels. In 1940, U.S. coal production was 512.8 million tons. By 1944, it had soared to 684.9 million tons as coal fueled the factories, power plants and furnaces that were the foundation of the arsenal of democracy. It would take until 1976 to exceed that level of production.
U.S. industrial productive capacity changed the course of the war. U.S. industry provided nearly two-thirds of all Allied military equipment – including 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, 86,000 tanks and two million army trucks. American shipyards turned out nearly 9,000 warships. By the close of the war, the U.S was home to more than half of the world’s industrial production.
By the end of 1945 with victory achieved over both Germany and Japan, the U.S. coal industry had conclusively answered any questions about its ability to rise to the moment and meet the needs of the war effort. But it now faced a new challenge: what to do with its expanded productive capacity now that the great wartime mobilization was over?
Rockwell Kent and “Endless Energy for Limitless Living”
The industry recognized it needed to reposition itself for a new, postwar America. Instead of fueling armament, it could be an enabler of an era of peace and prosperity. To illustrate that promise, the Bituminous Coal Institute, a predecessor to today’s National Mining Association, turned to the mind and paint brush of Rockwell Kent, one of the nation’s foremost artists.
Kent was commissioned to paint a series of paintings showing the centrality of coal for modern postwar society. The paintings would run as ads in publications like the Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek and Liberty.
In “To Make Dream Homes Come True,” Kent painted humanity harnessing coal to light and heat new housing developments, a foreshadowing of the suburban housing boom that was to come.
In “Endless Energy for Limitless Living,” Kent painted light bursting from coal and flowing into a generator, a depiction of humanity’s ability to harness the power and promise of coal for tomorrow.
In “Baker of the Bread of Abundance,” Kent shows us a family sitting down for a meal with the warm glow of coal illuminating and warming the table. The family sits in reverence, perhaps prayer, thankful for the blessings bestowed upon them.
And in “Generator of Jobs,” Kent shows coal enabling the jobs of tomorrow, as men and women from a wide variety of industries look ahead to the new opportunities glowing on the horizon.
In total, Kent completed nine paintings for the series. At the conclusion of the project, the paintings were offered as gifts to leading mining schools across the country where they can still be found today.
Remarkably, Kent’s vision for coal’s promise would prove prophetic. Coal would become the nation’s electricity workhorse, providing more than half of the nation’s electricity for decades and shepherding in the rise of the world’s most dynamic economy and a global superpower. Eighty years later, as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, the vision and promise of Kent’s paintings still resonate.
Coal remains a foundational piece of the nation’s energy mix, underpinning electricity affordability and grid reliability and supporting more than 300,000 jobs. And along with helping pull tens-of-millions out of energy poverty overseas and building the infrastructure of tomorrow, it’s also helping usher in a new technological leap forward as the electrification of transportation and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence begin to reshape our world. Happy 250th birthday, America! A celebration of so much but certainly a celebration of “Endless Energy for Limitless Living.”
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