Going against the grain: aborted bottom-up decentralization

Abstract

Coal and railroads are intimately related. Coal is used to make cokes, essential for the production of steel for rails and steam locomotives. And, of course, coal replaced wood as the energy source for the steam engines. Coal was indeed the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution. It is therefore interesting that our second story begins exactly one century after the first railroad boom in the mid-1850s in America, the subject of our first story. This time it is about the British coal-mining industry of the mid-1950s.