274 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



Average price, August 31st, 1870 $4.83 



Average price, August 30th, 1871 5.03 



Average price, August 28th, 1872 3.46 



Average price, August 27th, 1873 5.17 



" We confess our inability to do justice to the facts 

 which the above figures so eloquently proclaim. In 1870 

 and 1871, the supply of coal was restricted by strikes 

 of the laborers, which for magnitude and obstinate per- 

 sistency are without a parallel in the history of Trades 

 Unions. Last year is the only one of the four when 

 the price of coal was regulated by natural laws, with 

 both supply and demand unimpeded. This year we 

 have a conspiracy of the coal corporations, and as the 

 result of that conspiracy we have prices already far 

 above the point to which strikes and suspensions car- 

 ried them in 1870 and 1871. The State of Pennsyl- 

 vania might have levied a tax on anthracite coal of the 

 difference between this and last year's prices, and paid 

 her entire bonded debt in one year. The annual pro- 

 duct of such a tax would extinguish the whole debt of 

 the State of New York, Canal bonds and all, even with 

 the present deficiencies in the Sinking Funds. Yet 

 people are expected to. pay over these millions to the 

 wealthiest corporations in the world without a murmur. 

 We are told by Mr. Mead, the secretary of the little 

 twenty per cent. Pennsylvania Coal Company, that it 

 13 * beneficial ' to us to submit to this extortion ; that it 

 is * right and reasonable ' that we should pay this tax. 

 Here have these companies for five years been fighting 

 each other and their private competitors, and distribut- 

 ing all the while ten, fifteen, and twenty per cent, divi- 

 dends ; and now they come forward and extort a coal 

 tax of more than a dollar per ton over and above what 



