DOMESTIC FUEL. 25 



patible with economy, because coals expensive to mine can not com- 

 pete on a commercial basis with those which may be mined cheaply, 

 and the two, in general, occur in such intimate association that the first, 

 under present conditions, must be sacrificed in order to get the second, 

 If the price is arbitrarily fixed high enough to cover the extraction of 

 high-cost coal, society will pay too much for low-cost coal. If, on the 

 contrary, the price is allowed to seek a natural level, the high-cost coal 

 can not be extracted and much of it becomes permanently lost. It 

 may be asserted that we should use up the cheaply obtainable coal 

 first and then later, when necessary, turn to the coal more expensive 

 to produce. Such would be advisable, were it not for the fact that 

 the fat and the lean occur intimately mixed, and we can not later 

 return and glean the unused values. This Hmitation is set by the 

 geological occurrence of coal and can not be changed. The only way 

 by which coal can be mined effectively is for the price to be adjusted 

 to the mining costs of each mine, and even to those of different 

 parts of the same mine. Obviously, this would require a pooHng of 

 interests— in short, integration. 



Bituminous coal, therefore, is a necessity which can not be produced 

 advantageously under competitive operation. It has become by its 

 very nature a public utility, and its administration as such, with 

 integrated activity, is the only practicable way by which its full 

 service can be secured. 



Integrated coal mining, under proper limitations, will reduce waste, 

 stabilize production, adjust supply to demand, lessen transportation, 

 and hold the centers of coal production longer than otherwise in their 

 present spots to the advantage of the present distribution of industrial 

 activities, but can not be expected to lower the cost of coal to the 

 consumer. For that purpose, as already pointed out, far-reaching 

 changes in coal utihzation alone will suffice. While the price of coal 

 to the consumer has been too high, the price of coal at the mine has 

 been, in general, too low — so low in fact that it has been a smaU factor 

 in the ultimate cost to the public. That is evident in the contrast 

 betvv^een one doUar and the figure the consumer pays. The price of 

 coal at the mine mouth, however, has been slowly advancing; the 

 upward tendency is natural and if left to itself will become stronger 

 and stronger as more and more of the easy-to-get coal is mined. At 

 the present moment the price at the mine is too low, because of the 

 apparent abundance of easy-to-get coal; but within a very few years 

 (if not already), with exhaustion of cheaply mineable coal, the mining 

 costs are bound to attain a rank more consequential in effect upon the 

 ultimate price. It is even now very generally conceded that the 

 "day of cheap coal is over." While integrated mining would add 

 slightly to the average ton-cost of coal at the mine, the effect would 



