December 1, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



771 



years this disparity must be expected to 

 increase), there results naturally a lack of 

 competition for the market. Even gentle- 

 men's agreements are unnecessary so long 

 as every operator can reasonably expect to 

 sell his product, and the market price of 

 anthracite at the mine must therefore tend 

 to be fixed by the operator who has the larg- 

 est mining and resource cost rather than by 

 his neighbor who may be doubly favored 

 with a mine less expensive to work and a 

 lease less exacting in terms. 



Confessedly, this analysis of the cost ele- 

 ments that enter into the price of coal em- 

 phasizes our lack of specific facts, which 

 can be supplied in the future only through 

 "installation of uniform cost-keeping meth- 

 ods and uniform and improved accounting 

 systems," to quote from the declaration of 

 purposes of the Pittsburgh coal producers. 

 "With the results of such bookkeeping in 

 hand, more definite reply can be made to 

 the public's appeal for relief from high 

 prices. Yet even now it may be possible to 

 suggest how that relief will eventually be 

 obtained. Study of present conditions in 

 the coal-mining districts fails to encourage 

 the idea of governmental operation of 

 the seven thousand coal mines in this coun- 

 try. More in line with the trend of public 

 sentiment in the last decade, however, is 

 governmental control in the interest of the 

 consumer by regulation of prices, and to 

 judge from the facts of experience in the 

 regulation of transportation of other pub- 

 lie utilities, the public coal commissions will 

 be given sufficient discretionary powers to 

 safeguard the interests of producer and 

 consumer alike, and even mandatory re- 

 quirements, either legislative or executive, 

 will be subject to judicial review. 



Competition seems to have failed of late 

 years to benefit the consumer of coal. In 

 the bituminous fields the competition, when- 

 ever present, has been wasteful and in the 

 anthracite fields there has been practical 



absence of healthy competition, and whether 

 too great or too little competition, the re- 

 sult is the same — to increase the actual cost 

 of bituminous coal by saddling the indus- 

 try and its product with the fixed charges 

 on idle or semi-idle mines and to raise the 

 price of anthracite coal by favoring the 

 burdens of high resource costs. 



In estimating the aggregate losses in- 

 curred by society by reason of the large 

 number of mines not working at full ca- 

 pacity, the facts to be considered are that 

 the capital invested in mine equipment asks 

 a wage based on a year of 365 days of 24 

 hours, while labor's year averaged last year 

 only 230 days in the anthracite mines and 

 only 203 days in the bituminous mines, with 

 only five to eight hours to the day. 



As coal is more an interstate than intra- 

 state commodity, any regulation of prices 

 needs to be under federal control, and to 

 benefit both consumer and producer such 

 control can not stop with transportation 

 and mining costs, but must stand ready to 

 exercise full rights as a trustee of the peo- 

 ple over the coal in the ground. The pri- 

 vate owner of coal land, which derives its 

 real value from society 's needs, has no more 

 sacred right to decide whether or not that 

 coal shall be mined when it is needed by so- 

 ciety or to fix an exorbitant price on this 

 indispensable national resource than the 

 coal operators have to combine for the pur- 

 pose of exacting an excessive profit from 

 the consumer, or the railroads to charge all 

 that the traffic may bear. The proposal to 

 bring landowner under the same rule as 

 mine operator and coal carrier may seem 

 radical, but where is the point at which 

 coal becomes the resource upon which in- 

 dustrial society depends for its very life ? 



Public regulation, however, will be fair, 

 and indeed in the long run will prove bene- 

 ficial to the landowner as well as to the con- 

 sumer, to the mine worker as well as to the 

 operator, because any such agency as the 



