coal: the resource and its full utilization. 
21 
of apprehension for the future. 1 Scattered and unorganized, most 
of the individual companies are small and financially weak; no 
adequate cooperation in engineering practice exists; new develop- 
ments are slow of growth; coal is mined for the most part by Con- 
servative, long established practice. With no methods of storage 
developed, the average mine can mine coal only when railroad cars 
stand ready to receive it; a fluctuating demand, accentuated by 
seasonal variations, leads to instability of operations; many mines 
in normal times must close down in slack periods, with destruc- 
tive effect upon the conditions and supply of labor. For years the 
price of coal at the mine has been from $1 to $1.15 a ton, a figure 
so low that only the best and most easily obtainable coal could be 
extracted by the cheapest methods of mining, irrespective of the 
waste involved; the tonnage of thin-seam and high-cost areas 
sacrificed in the process amounts to more than half the total coal 
produced to date. Many districts have been burdened with a 
leasing system that obligated the company to remove a given tonnage 
each year, irrespective of market demand or price, with the result 
that the richest spots were drawn from seam after seam with irre- 
trievable loss to present needs. Miners’ unions in general have fixed 
wages on the basis of thick and easily worked seams, and imposed 
such severe penalties upon inferior conditions that the operator is 
precluded from introducing new and improved methods. Upon 
all this, the policy of the Government, as exemplified in its anti- 
trust laws, has forbidden combinations and restrained cooperation, 
with the result that large-scale, standardized operations, a paramount 
and distinctive American achievement, is practically lacking in 
the mining of coal. 
These conditions are particularly objectionable because they 
concern a product of fundamental importance. As compared with 
the iron industry or the copper industry, the coal industry appears 
in an unfavorable light in production efficiency. The difference is 
not to be attributed otherwise than to the competitive system of 
small-unit mining, which has prevailed for coal in this country and 
indeed been perpetuated, against a natural tendency otherwise, by 
a public policy hostile to combination. 2 
1 “ For several years prior to 1916 it was a matter of general knowledge that the bituminous coal industry 
in the United States was in an unsound condition. In this basic industry, so necessary to the industrial 
life of the country, conditions had developed so that it was demoralized financially, wasteful methods of 
mining resulted in the permanent loss of millions of tons of coal that could have been saved otherwise, the 
existing mines through lack of demand were kept idle from one-fourth to one-third of the working time, 
with consequent hardship to labor.” Letter from Federal Trade Commission on Anthracite and Bitumi- 
nous Coal, S. Doc. No. 50, 65th Cong., 1st sess., Washington, 1917, p. 43. 
2 The individual coal producer can not he held responsible. In any attempt to recover more coal; that is, 
to make real progress in coal mining, he faced the opposition of the miners’ unions, of governmental re- 
strictions, and of probably financial loss. The three formed usually an unsuperable obstacle, although a 
considerable advance was attained in many creditable instances. If European coal mining conditions 
were impeded as the industry is in the United States, the industrial activities of Europe would come to a 
s tand-still, if the continent would not actually starve to death. 
