The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-03-03
COAL MONOPOLY
IS CHARGED IN
SENATE REPORT
Eight Transportation Com
panies Control Anthracite
Coal, Senator Vardaman
Claims.
(Ry Associated Press,

WASHINGTON, March 3.-Senator
Vardaman, of Mississippi, chairman of
| the senate manufacturers committee,
today inserted in the Congressional
Record statement on the commit
tees investigation Of the anthracite
| coal situation, charging that produc-
| tion Of anthracite coal in the United
States is controlled by eight large
| transportation companies, which
| through an almost complete monopoly
| were able to fix prices and determine
| the rate of production
Chairman Vardaman explained that
the committee was unable to present
its report at this time, as not all Of
the testimony taking in hearings at
Washington and in the Pennsylvania
coal fields had been printed. He add
ed, however, that he trusted he had
gathered together certain facts"
which he trusted would be of help to
the next congress in dealing with the
anthracite coal question.
Testimony before the committee, he
asserted in his statement, had dis
closed In his opinion that there is
no commodity in common use that
is sogabsolutely rnond Db5i3ed~ as the
anthracite coal production" Shortage
of anthracite during the war and the
existing high prices for the commod-
ity, he said, were due almost entirely
to this monopolistic control.
Names Controlling Lines.
Transportation corporations control
ling production in the Pennsylvania
fields-the only source of marketable
anthracite in North America--were
named in Senator Vardaman's state
ments as follows:
'The Reading (the holding company
Of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal
and Iron company and the Jersey Cen
trail, which in turn owns all of the
stock of the Lehigh and Wilkesbarre
company, the Lehigh Valley, the Del
aware, Lackawanna and Western; the
Delaware and Hudson; the Lehigh
Navigation compony (Which owns and
controls the Lehigh and New Eng
landD; the Erie, and the New York
Ontario and Western"
Although controlling but 72 percent
of the actual production of anthracite,
the statement asserted the eight COM
panies had made it Impossible for
Independent operators to compete with
them on any fair basis"
Legislation Urged.
Notwithstanding the fact" said the
statement, that the constitution of
Pennsylvania prohibits a transporta-
tion company from engaging in min
ing, these transportation companies
are in this business of not only trans.
porting this coal, but of mining it,
Expressing the hope that congress
might see the necessity of legislation
to protect the people of the United
States from what he described as ''the
greed, cupidity and avarice of these
soulless corporations" the Mississippi
senator recommended that "if the con-
stitution of Pennsylvania, which for
bids the transportation companies to
mine coal is a dead letter in that
state" the federal government under
the interstate commerce clause of ma
tion's constitution compel the divorce
ment of transportation companies
from mining corporations.
The statement made the additional
recommendation that the price of coal
be fixed by the government at a rate
which would guarantee of fair return
ing to the mining companies and
which would ''vouchsafe to the people
of America an ample suppoy of an
thracite coal at a reasonable price"