ABSTRACT
The Ruhr valley, Germany’s pre-eminent center of heavy industry, was divided in the nineteenth century between the Rhineland and Westphalia. The mining of coal had begun in the Essen-Mulheim area as early as the fourteenth century, but procedures remained extremely primitive for a long time. Miners dug only the coal close to the surface, either in shallow pits or short horizontal shafts. The developments were naturally accompanied by an increase in the use of steam power. Already in 1850 there were 69 steam engines in the collieries of the district with a total of 4750 horsepower. Miners had long enjoyed a form of health and burial insurance through an organization called the Knappschaft. This continued to exist in somewhat altered form, supplemented by sickness and burial insurance funds the miners joined on their own. In the big-business environment opportunities for social advancement on the parts of the workers were quite different from those in the bergisch region or around Krefeld.
