The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1895-04-22
Fair Play for the Coal Baron.


seen in the Philadelphia Inquirer a less
credtable expression than this, in its
| issue of last Saturday:
The wall of the individual coal producers
over the Generalization in the anthracite
trade and their talk of doing something to
| remedy matters add II picturesque figure
| to the anthracite situation. These indl-
| vduals find things are vastly changed
| from the glories of the Mcleod regime
when they lived like princes of the blood
and rolled mp ten years normal profits
in one. But now they get but $3.50 FOR
stove coal and $40 for other sizes, and
they cannot pay expenses and royalties
on this basis. They are losing money. The
Colerainc colliery has already shut down
because 1t cannot pay expenses and others
will follow If the situation does not mend
very soon, and the proprietors naturally
protest very vigorously against being
forced out of business. Their wrath is
directed against the Reading because its
managers decline TO allow 1t TO be bled
any longer for their benefit But what
can the individuals do? They can't hurt
anybody very much and their threat of
turning over their tonnage to the railroad
that viii haul 1t cheapest Is rank nom
sense. They will do a great deal of talk
ing, but that is all their demonstration
will amount to. Meanwhile efforts to ad-
just the percentages seem to have been
abandoned and a disposition is growing
TO ignore the whole question.
If the common carriers would so ad-
Just their charges for carrying news
papers that the Philadelphia Inquirer
could not sell copies of its daily editions
outside Philadelphia except at a direct
loss, would it not protest very vigor-
ously against being forced out of busi-
ness?' Would it not try it's level best
to secure a return of the newspaper
business to normal and equitable condi-
tions? This illustration only partly
covers the present situation in the
anthracite trade. The Inquirer has a
large market near it's own office. Even
though the railroads should practically
prevent it from selling papers outside
Philadelphia except at loss, it could
yet reach many thousand subscribers
within its city, railroads or no railroads.
But the producers of anthracite coal
sell only the merest fraction of their
output to persons living near the mines.
The element of haulage is practically
indispensable to the conduct of q trade
in hard coal Hence the coal trade,
even more than the newspaper trade,
is at the mercy of the railroads.
What is the result? The railroads
which own coal mines. finding that they
must have ready money, proceed to sell
their coal at a loss, in the belief that
they can more than compensate them
selves for that loss by the profit of haul
age. Thus rates are cut, competing
sales agents have to meet the cut, and
the brunt Of the damage falls on the
individual operator who has no rail-
road to return a freight profit greater
than the loss which he suffers through
the unjustly lowered price of coal.
Another aggravating feature Of the
situation Is that while railroads will, in
all probability. have business to do
century hence, the life of the anthracite
coal business is necessarily confined
within narrow limits. Thirty. fifty,
seventy-five years hence there may
be no coal to mine. Yet the men whose
commodity is thus steadily approaching
exhaustion must meekly sustain unjust
losses now. or else be lamDooned by
pert paragraphers on the city press and
treated with disdain by figure-head
presidents of mismanaged railroads.
Fair play for even the much-derded
"cual barOnr' Sacrifice him, and you
sacrifice one Of Pennsylvania three
greatest industries, besides throwing
into idleness one-tenth of all the wage
earners employed in this common
wealth.