The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1876-08-30

In the coal sale yesterday the prices
ranged from 50 IS to So 30 ton for the
various sorts of coal delivered on the Hudson
in quantities of a hundred or a thousand
| tons. This, therefore, is the price to
dealers, who have to get the coal to their
yards in the city and thence retail it by the
ton, and. by some rational consideration Of
the expense of transportation and the profit
to the retail dealer, the public may see that
coal bought at these prices may be sold in
the city for less than it has been sold for
hitherto. But it will, perhaps, not be sold
for much less, for the retailers themselves
form second ring when the great original
railroad and mine ring is broken. These
prices may indicate to the owners Of coal
mine shares that they have no occasion for
panic.
Speculation on q commodity of absolute
necessity to the people has been for years
the source of enormous profit to some
body in the coal trade; and it is, perhaps,
only another sort Of speculation that now
runs coal securities down to panic prices.
They may not be the source Of fabulous
are still rs good securities as they ever
had any honest right to be. The mines
are the same, and the market is the
same. and the facilities for mining and trans
portation are constantly improving. 1t is
only that product of speculative knavery-
the combination that is gone. Is man
ruined because he is deprived Of the oppor-
tunity to rob his neighbor? For legitimate
trade and legitimate gains, and for those
who hold their securities as shares in q
legitimate enterprise, there is no occasion for
uneasiness Indeed, the public have rather
to fear that the whole trouble is caused by
some new ruse Of the men who manage these
great corporations. Who knows but what
the rupture is sham, contrived to run the
securities down that these cool spectators
may buy them up at ridiculous prices, and
then, reorganizing the combination, sweep
in enormous gains? That would be rs fair
as any of their transactions. With specula-
ton put aside coal is worth in this city
about four dollars ton, which is just
double what it is worth ct the mines.
Transportation is, perhaps, the largest single
element in the cost of coal to those who are
as far from the mines as we are yet in the
time when the facilities for transportation
were far inferior to what they are now, and
when consumption was far less, that was
the price of coal in this city. For years
since it has been in the neighborhood of
seven dollars The thirty million dollars
that this difference would make in the re-
tnrp for the Pennsylvania yield is extorted
from the public every year by the combine
ton.
In this connection the public has occasion
only to regret that for its present immunity
from robbery il is indebted only to the quar-
rels of the schemers. This is ground upon
which the law should protect the people and
upon which no doubt it would protect them
if the thirty millions annually extorted from
consumers did not furnish corruption fund
that legislators cannot withstand. Our laws
limit the charges that railroad companies
may make, and there is no good reason why
they should not in the same manner in the
incorporation of coal companies secure that
the people shall be supplied at proper adj
vance on the cost of production.
Legislation of this nature is effective in
Europe. 1t has not been applied here be-
cause it was our early theory that men were
more honest than the laws of the Old World
seemed to assume. 1t was thought, more
over, that the freedom of trade-the very
abolition of privileges make n COM
petition that would protect the people. Our
coal and other combinations have thrown a
new light on that point, and they enforce
the principle that where competition fails
the law must stand between corporations
and the public. There are many points in
which it seems clear we will yet be COM
PEELED to adopt the system by which in
Europe the government regulates the price
of loaf of bread or glass of beer.