THE FARMER'S WAR AGAINST MONOPOLIES. 255 



Eastern States. The bituminous coal deposits of the 

 United States are supposed to be inexhaustible. As 

 yet they have been scarcely touched. They are capa- 

 ble of supplying the wants of the entire continent, and 

 of contributing towards the needs of other lands. The 

 single State of West Virginia contains coal enough to 

 supply the entire Union. There is no reason to believe 

 that the supply open to the American people will ever 

 be exhausted, and, with our facilities for mining, coal 

 should be produced at a comparatively small cost. It 

 never should reach a high figure, but should be so 

 moderate in price that no one in this land of plenty 

 should ever suffer from the lack of it. 



Yet scarcely a winter passes that we do not see, in 

 the Eastern States at least, a scarcity of coal, which is 

 the cause of great and unnecessary suffering to the 

 poorer classes. In spite of the immense qantities of 

 fuel within reach ; in spite of the fact that this should 

 be a land of cheap fuel, we find, in all the Eastern 

 States, that coal rises in price so rapidly upon the ap- 

 proach of winter that the poor can scarcely obtain it, 

 and people of moderate means are compelled to make 

 serious sacrifices of other comforts in order to obtain 

 the necessary supply. 



The cause of this unnatural state of affairs will 

 appear as we examine into the manner in which New 

 England and the Middle States are supplied with fuel. 



The anthracite coal used in the Eastern States, and 

 preferred by Eastern people to the bituminous coal of 

 the West, comes almost entirely from a small district 

 in the State of Pennsylvania, in the Eastern portion 

 of the State. This region is included within an area 

 of about five hundred square miles, and within this 



