THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

799

the counties of this region, some of which excels the most celebrated coals of this kind in Great Britain. The coking coal lies in thick beds over sixteen hundred square miles of territory, through Pike, Letcher, Harlan, Floyd, Knott, Perry, Leslie, and Bell counties.

Rich iron ores have long been known in quantities and of value in Bath county, in North-eastern Kentucky, and in the Red and Kentucky river valleys. The large deposits of Clinton ore, dyestone and red fossil along the eastern base of Cumberland and Stone mountains and duplicated on the slopes of Powell's mountain and Walden's ridge, and in the Oriskany ore beds of Pine mountain, were brought more prominently to the knowl edge of the public. These, together with the rich and inexhaustible fields. of iron deposits, fronting the border line of Kentucky for one hundred miles, in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, began to interest the attention of capitalists abroad. The proximity of all the materials necessary to the manufacture of iron and steel, in great abundance, presented opportunities unsurpassed anywhere in the world. The vast forest of timber covering this hitherto inaccessible region adds to the attraction for enterprise and development.

Large investments in mineral and timber lands, on the part of English and American capitalists, very soon followed the publication of these authentic reports of the geological survey by Professor Procter. The developments have been most marked in Bell county. Within two years the mountain village of Pineville has grown to the proportions of an infant city, and the city of Middlesborough, built up from the forest, to be peopled by thousands. The taxable wealth of Bell county has increased from one million to over seven million dollars. Railroads have penetrated this region and, tunneling the mountains, have opened to the commerce and traffic of the world the vast stores of natural wealth hitherto inaccessible. These coking coal fields are supplying fuel for a number of furnaces for making iron, and large quantities are being carried to distant citieseven as far as St. Louis-for the gas supply of the same. Already six large coke iron blast furnaces have been completed and two others commenced in this vicinity, with a total capacity for an annual product of over three hundred thousand tons. This is but the beginning of the development for South-east Kentucky.

The improvement in the north-east, and within a radius of fifty miles. around Ashland, has been almost as marked. Similar results appear in the region of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, in a notable field of iron ores, of which Grand Rivers is the center. Not less rapidly have the coal mines interspersed over the eleven thousand square miles of coal area in East Kentucky and four thousand five hundred square miles in West Kentucky been opened up, and their products added to the commerce and wealth of the State.

*Geological Report, 1890-92.

The report shows that the survey has brought to knowledge the existence of extensive deposits of fire and pottery clays of great variety and excellence in the counties west of the Cumberland river and in other localities; lead ores and fluor-spar in Caldwell, Crittenden and Livingston counties; asphalt rock, marls, cement rock, salt brine, natural gas and clays for making paving brick of great excellence and quantity in the district of Meade, Breckinridge and Grayson counties; petroleum in the Cumberland counties, from Wayne to Barren; and building stone of great value in many localities.

CHARLES J. NORWOOD.

Associated with the geological and mining history of the State is the important department of Inspector of Mines and the duties assigned to the same. The growth of the mining interests made necessary the creation of this office in 1884. In May of that year, Mr. Charles J. Norwood was appointed Inspector of Mines by Governor Knott, and has continued to fill the office since.

The report of Inspector Norwood for 1891 is a reliable and interesting history of coal mining in Kentucky, now just emerging from its age of infancy. For the year ending June 30, 1890, the output of bituminous coal from the mines of Western Kentucky was 30,417,289 bushels; of South-eastern Kentucky, 17,443,689 bushels; of North-eastern Kentucky, 10,435,071 bushels, making a total of 58,296,049. The total output of

the same fields for the year ending June 30, 1891, was 67,610,660 bushels, an increase of 9,314,611 bushels. From the table of product for the last twenty years the output for 1870 was but 4,228,000 bushels; for 1880, 23,657,200 bushels, and for 1890 (to December 31st), 62,078,609. This increase was over five hundred per cent. during the first decade and over two hundred per cent. the second. Four thousand nine hundred and forty-one persons were employed under ground in these bituminous mines for the year ending June, 1891, in that time producing 67,610,660 bushels of coal, an average of 13,706 bushels to each miner. For the year 1890 there was produced, in addition to the above, 1,244,550 bushels of cannel coal and 517,750 bushels of coke from the new plants at St. Bernard and

GOVERNOR BUCKNER'S ADMINISTRATION.

801

Cumberland Valley Colliery Company. The bushel of eighty pounds and the ton of two thousand pounds are used in Kentucky.

Under the impetus given in part through the enterprise awakened and by improved revenue enactments, the taxable wealth of the State has increased in the decade from 1880 to 1890 over $209,000,000, or more than This was $45,000,000 more than the increase in any other

sixty per cent.
Southern State, and
much more than double
the average increase in
all these.

During the administration of Governor Buckner, G. M. Adams was secretary of state, and C. Y. Wilson served as commissioner of agriculture. Messrs. I. A. Spaulding, J. F. Hagar and W. B. Fleming were appointed railroad commissioners. James B. Beck having died in office at Washington, while United States senator, May 3, 1890, on the 17th of the same month John G. Carlisle

was elected to succeed him. W. S. Pryor, Joseph H. Lewis, W. H. Holt, and Caswell Bennett, of the Court of Appeals, and W. H. Yost, Joseph Barbour, and J. H. Brent, the latter recently appointed by the governor to the vacancy occasioned by the death of Van B. Young, of the Superior Court, constituted the last courts of the highest resort under the provisions of the old constitution. Fayette Hewitt, having resigned as auditor, Luke C. Norman was appointed in his stead and Henry F. Duncan named to succeed the latter as commissioner of the insurance bureau. Woodford Longmoor having died during his term of office, A. Addams was appointed to the vacancy created in the office of clerk of Court of Appeals. Sam Hill was made adjutant-general of the State under the administration of Governor Buckner, C. J. Norwood inspector of mines, and W. J. Macy inspector of public trusts. Mrs. Mary Brown Day was elected librarian by the Legislature in 1890, and again in 1892.

One of the most marked features of improvement during this administrative term was in the management of the Bureau of Agriculture, under the efficient and faithful direction of Commissioner Charles Y. Wilson. Through

the judicious selection and distribution of seeds, the dissemination of information when needed and most appreciated, and the holding of Farmers' Institutes at convenient points in the State, a new impetus and life were given to agriculture and live stock interests, resulting in permanent improve

ED PORTER THOMPSON.

ment and progress in many localities. The intelligent skill and enterprise shown by Commissioner Wilson in his department were at once creditable to himself, and of inestimable value to the Commonwealth. He has shown the possibilities of good through the agency of this bureau, for future time.

The General Assembly of 1889-90, in one of those periodic affectations of economy for which there is no defense of rational plea, reduced the tax rate for general expenses from twenty to fifteen cents on the one hundred dollars of assessed property. The inevitable increase of expenses

attendant on the Constitutional Convention, to convene in a few months, and the fact of an existing deficit of over two hundred thousand dollars in the treasury, had no effect to deter the body. By rare coincidence the sum of six hundred thousand dollars of direct tax money, expended by the State during the late war, was refunded by the Government in 1891. This was set apart by the Constitutional Convention for the benefit of the school fund, the State executing bond and paying the interest annually. The principal was put in the treasury for general, State expenses. The relief from this source saved the Commonwealth from a serious embarrassment for a time; but a result was that, in July, 1892, the treasurer announced an exhausted treasury.

Few, if any, States in the Union have provided so munificently for their unfortunate citizens as Kentucky in proportion to her taxable property. The official reports for 1889 show that in the three insane asylums, at Lexington, Anchorage and Hopkinsville, there were two thousand five hundred and sixty-three subjects of lunacy being cared for, and one hundred and eighty-five outside, at a cost to the treasury of $377,928.31. Of idiots not confined, and distributed throughout the counties, there were one thousand four hundred and eighteen, for the support of whom the

CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS.

803

State paid in that year $100,02 1.88.

There were, beside these, one hundred and one inmates of the Blind Asylum, at a cost of $28,037.67; one hundred and sixty-eight in the Deaf and Dumb Institute, at $58, 152.23, and one hundred and forty-six in the Feeble Minded Institute, at $29,170.69. Thus it appears that four thousand five hundred and eighty-one dependent citizens were beneficiaries of the charities of the Commonwealth at a total cost to the treasury of $593,310.78, about one in every four hundred of the population. The cost per head of the insane in public charge is about $134; of the blind, $277; of the deaf and dumb, $346, and of the feeble minded, $200. These are the charges outside of the costs of the six handsome and commodious buildings erected by the State on the sites selected for the several institutions. The total disbursements of revenue from the treasury for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1890, were $3,811,248.32; of this amount near $1,530,000

was paid out for education in the schools of the State. Adding to the latter amount the sum expended for public charities, and together they make fifty-five per cent. of all the expenses of the Commonwealth.

It is to the credit of the management of the Feeble Minded Institute that the first successful efforts were here made to educate and train these unfortunates to labor and for self-help. Many have been thus returned to their families and homes capable of self-support. The successful work of Dr. Stewart, through years of experiment and patient training, has given the institution a reputation throughout this country and in Europe.

The Kentucky Institution for the Education of the Blind was established fifty-one years ago, the sixth of the kind in the United States. B. B. Huntoon has presided over its management as superintendent since 1871, and with eminent fitness and efficiency. For the year ending October 30, 1891, the report shows that there were enrolled one hundred and twenty-one pupils in charge, twenty-five of whom were colored.

the main structure, there is a separate building for the colored and one for