272 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



SCENE IN THE COAL REGIONS. 



ton, and is rising in price. Probably, wben the mid- 

 winter arrives, the rate will have advanced to ten dol- 

 lars per ton, and this will be the average price through- 

 out the Middle and Eastern States. And yet it costs 

 but from two dollars to two dollars and fifty cents to 

 produce this coal at the mines. The balance is made 

 up by the enormous rates charged for transportation 

 and by the profits of the retail dealers. Mr. Franklin 

 B. Gowen, president of the Philadelphia & Reading 

 Railroad Company, in his report to the stockholders in 

 January, 1871, made an estimate of the natural average 

 price of coal at Port Carbon, a point on the Reading 

 Railroad, about ninety miles from Philadelphia. He 

 declared " that if all the coal fields were producing 



