The copper era., 1906-04-26
GREATEST OF THE
TRUSTS IS COAL
Only Six Years Old, Yet it Owns 50 PEI
Cent. and Controls 90 Per Cent.
of Output.


ton is a more impregnable monopoly
than Standard Oil, that its miners
have formed almost as despotic an
organization, and that the innocent
bystander's hope for relief lies only
in the realization of Roosevelt's sug-
gestion of governmental supervision
of corporations, are statements made
in the April number of Everybody's
Magazine, for which Hartley Davis
writes an article entitled ''The Coal
Trust, the Labor Trust, and the Peo-
pie Who Pay"
s'The coal trust . is a scant half
dozen years DID, writes Mr.. Davis,
''yet it owns SO per cent. of the an
thracite coal in the ground and con-
trolls SO per cent; it owns perpetual
franchise to mine and distribute; it
owns the labor of thousands of men
and boys; it owns men who used to be
known as independent operators
then as Operators merely; it owns
the railroads that transport the coal.
''It decides how much coal shall be
IdhOn 4AOhA lhO 81 OAhNAs VIM ~ SAAe-A-
be shipped and how, what the carry
ing charges shall be, and the selling
price 1t can foretell what the mini
mum prices will be five years from
now in New York or at a way station
in Minnesota. The maximum it
would not predict, for that depends
upon economic conditions meaning
- he Nh ~ of "a
public to pay,
"Already," declars the magazine
writer, "this gigantic trust has taken
from the people SsO,OOO,O 900 more than
could have been collected had the
combination not been effective"
Mr.. Davis asserts that nature has
given every natural Advantage for the
formation of monopoly by putting
all the anthracite coal in the world
into a strip of land in northeastern
Pennsylvania 125 miles long and 80
miles wide.
''The gold mines of the whole
EARTH" he says, ''are of less value
than the brittle carbon that some
cosmic caprice once thrust beneath
the surface of this narrow little
stretch of mountain country.
Statisticians will tell you that in
1904 the world produced a gold supply
of $3.50, 1000, OOO-but each year coal is
torn from the heart of the anthra-
cite country to the value of $780,
OO,OOO
"The results of single inancier's
obtaining control of all the sources
of the gold supply are almost beyond
conjecture. Yet that is what al
ready has happened to the coal indus
try, which is now under absolute one
man rule"
In recounting the history of the
anthracite regions MIR. Davis tells of
the baneful powers of the "Molly
Maguires," the famous secret society
of laboring men whose career of as
sassination and despotism was broken
up in 1876. He declares that this
victory enabled the operators to per-
feet their organization to such de-
gree that they now have little to fear
except "their own greed and the re-
mote possibility of government own
ership" The writer says, however,
that under the leadership of John
Mitchell, perhaps the most able
leader in the world" new
power has come on the scene.
1.-THE downtrodden miners,' says
the article, ''chief sufferers in the
long drawn-out warfare between
operators and railroads, have at last
learned the power of combination,
and now, organized under a great
leader, are themselves a trust. Con-
fdent in the ordered strength of
their numbers, they dare confront
the coal trust with their demands
and force that despotism to treat
with them as with an equal power.''
The palm of supremacy for indus
trial combination Mr.. Davis awards
to the 'coal barons," because they
have eliminated not only immediate
competition, but the very possibility
of competition, through their abso-
lutte control of all the anthracite
coal IN the world He says this
step is infinitely in advance of any
other existing monopoly.
And the man "whose work has
proved him the greatest of all trust
generals" is declared to be George
Franklin Baer, president of the
Reading.
In commenting upon Mr.. Davis
story the editor of Everybody's says:
Believing that the steady advance
in the price of hard coal constituted
a real public affection, we began to
study the conditions in the coal
trade. Even the Standard Oil is not
impregnable, and we presumed that
here, likewise, some relief from the
extortionate tax being laid on the
people might be disclosed. Investi-
cation forces the conclusion that the
only relief in sight lies in the ten
dency of public utilities, of which
President Roosevelt is the foremost
champion.
Coronado Railroad.