ABSTRACT
When Dr. John S.Wentz died in July of 1918, the national economy was on a war footing, the coal industry was expanding as never before, and Wentz's son Daniel was forty-six and in the prime of life. On his father's death he inherited the presidency not only of Stonega Coke & Coal but of all the family's various coal concerns in eastern Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. He also inherited his father's private investments, including one of the largest single blocks of stock in Westmoreland Coal Company, the western Pennsylvania concern originally founded by Pennsylvania Railroad investors in 1854 in order to ship coal directly to eastern markets. (This was the legendary firm whose coal traffic provoked Robert E.Lee's 1863 incursion into Pennsylvania that ended at the Battle of Gettysburg.) Like John L. Lewis, Daniel Wentz had reached the summit of a booming industry only to find, now that the war was over, that there was little to celebrate.
