University of Virginia Library

Recent Increase in Coal Shipments

The Company increased its coal shipments during
the last fiscal year by over 350,000 tons in excess of
shipments for the previous fiscal year; and during the
first six months of the present fiscal year made a
further increase of 140,000 tons over shipments made
during the corresponding period of the last fiscal year.

The Company has recently secured a contract calling
for the delivery of 66,000 tons of coal per month for a
period of five years, which will mean steady employment
for the miners at work at the Tom's Creek operation
for the period mentioned.

A large portion of the coal mined by the Company is
shipped to New England points, as well as to railroads,
and to cotton mills and other industrial enterprises
throughout the South.

The furnaces owned by the Company, with all the
nine stacks in operation, produce about fifteen hundred
tons of pig iron per day, besides a small quantity
of high-grade charcoal iron made at Foster Falls,
Virginia.

The Company has no sale agency for the sale of its
pig iron, and is now handling its tonnage on the open
market. The coal product is handled by the General
Offices of the Company through its sales department.

The Company at one time operated the Virginia
Southwestern Railway, known as "The Natural Tunnel
Route," comprising one hundred and sixty miles
of railroad extending from Mountain City, Tennessee,
to a connection with the Louisville & Nashville Railroad
at Appalachia, Virginia.

This road was sold to the Southern Railway system
after an extension had been built into the Black Mountain
coal territory of Lee County, and also a cut-off
built, known as the Holston River Railway, from
Moccasin Gap on the Virginia Southwestern Line to
Persia, Tennessee, on the Southern Railway.

When the Company sold the Virginia & Southwestern
Railway, the general offices were removed from Bristol,
Tennessee, to Roanoke, about three years ago.

The present quarters of the Company consist of two
entire floors in the Strickland Building.

The office force consists of about twenty-five clerks,
and thousands of men are employed at the various
plants, mines, and other operations owned by the
Company.

The capital stock of the Company is $10,000,000.
The bonded indebtedness was originally $10,000,000,
but this has been reduced within the last few years to
$5,289,000.

The officers of the Company are: John B. Newton,
President; Henry K. McHarg, Jr., Vice President and
General Manager; D. D. Hull, Jr., General Counsel;
John W. Cure, Secretary and Treasurer; William N.
Morgan, Purchasing Agent; W. B. Bowles, Auditor;
C. W. Owen, General Sales Agent, Roanoke, Virginia;
and Charles B. Colebrook, Assistant Secretary, 40
Wall Street, New York.