This book, originally published in 1974, examines the changes that took place in the market position of the coal industry in the twentieth century. It examines in detail the position of the industry during the two World Wars, the problems of the inter-war years, the effects of nationalisation and the coal shortage after the Second World War, the decline of the markets in the 1960s and the consequences of the energy crisis of the early 1970s. The book analyses what problems the changes caused, and what measures were taken to try to overcome them. Looking in detail at the industrial disputes of 1971/2 and 1973/4 the book shows how the miners' actions fitted in closely with their past experiences and behaviour patterns.

While most studies of labor in the coal industry focus on the struggle to organize unions, this work offers a more diverse and quantitative examination of the labor market. It regards the economic lives of the bituminous coal miners in the early twentieth century. Fishback's analytic framework encompasses competition among employers for labor, the legal environment, institutional development in response to transactions costs as well as the impact of labor unions on the coal industry. Utilizing economic theory and statistics, Fishback reveals the models hidden in the descriptions of events, and then tests their internal consistency as well as the hypotheses they generate.