Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company. Coal Dept.

The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company was one of the largest and most prosperous anthracite mining and transporting companies in Pennsylvania.

The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company was incorporated in Pennsylvania on April 7, 1832, as the Liggetts Gap Railroad Company. Its name was changed to the Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company on April 14, 1851, and to the DL&W Railroad Company on March 11, 1853, at which time it absorbed the Delaware & Cobbs Gap Railroad Company.

The first section of railroad, from Scranton to Great Bend, opened in October, 1851. The Southern Division of the railroad was opened between Scranton and the Delaware River on May 27, 1856, forming a more direct route to New York City. The DL&W leased the Morris & Essex Railroad in 1868 and, after upgrading it to permit a heavy coal tonnage, secured its own line to New York Harbor. Other extensions carried the Lackawanna to Utica, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Oswego in central New York State and to Buffalo in the early 1880s. The DL&W had a particular advantage in that it was allowed to directly operate coal mines. The DL&W began mining on its own account in 1851, when a Coal Department was organized. The Lackawanna was exceptionally well placed to supply both New York City and New England via the Southern Division and also upstate New York, the Great Lakes, and Canada via the Northern Division.

In April, 1864, the Lackawanna interests formed the Nanticoke Coal & Iron Company which acquired 5,000 acres around Nanticoke in the lower Wyoming Valley. In June, 1868, the Nanticoke Coal & Iron Company absorbed the Steuben Coal Company and the Granby Coal Company, and it in turn was merged into the DL&W on June 23, 1870. The DL&W was the fourth- or fifth-ranked anthracite producer in the 1870s.

The Lackawanna's Coal Department handled both mining and sales, and gave the company much greater control over production and marketing than that enjoyed by other coal producers. The Lackawanna was quick to exploit these advantages. The DL&W was the best managed and most profitable of the anthracite roads, particularly under the long administration of Samuel Sloan (1817-1907), a tight-fisted manager who ran the company from 1867 to 1899. The Lackawanna constantly increased its market share, and by 1907 was the second-ranked anthracite producer. With lower mining costs and greater profits, the DL&W could better afford to be generous to its men if necessity required it. During the 1875 Long Strike, while the Reading was crushing the Miners & Laborers Benevolent Association at a high cost in money and lives, the DL&W kept its men at work by paying pre-strike wages. Cuts were finally made in 1877, and the DL&W miners joined the railroad workers in the Great Strike of that year.

The Coal Department was initially headed by Joseph Albright (1811-1888) as General Coal Agent. He left the company to join the Delaware & Hudson in 1866, and was replaced by William Read Storrs (1824-1905), a native of Ashford, Connecticut. Storrs headed the department until 1899. He was also president of the Moses Taylor Hospital, founded in 1884, and jointly supported by the DL&W and the Lackawanna Iron & Steel Company. The Hepburn Act of 1906 outlawed the transportation by common carriers of certain commodities in which they had a legal interest. The Government's victory in the Reading Case in 1920 established the principle of complete separation of mining and transporting companies. In 1921, the Lackawanna effected a voluntary segregation, whereby the Glen Alden Coal Company, hitherto a paper subsidiary, took over the mines. The Coal Department management in effect bought out Glen Alden and operated at as an independent company.

Although the anthracite industry had already begun its long decline, Glen Alden, like the DL&W before it, was the best financed and best operated anthracite company until the final collapse of the industry in the mid-1950s.