22 BULLETIN 102, PART 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
Coal can not be mined effectively under the present system. The 
nature of the resource demands integration. Only by the grace of 
lavish coal wealth has the United States this long borne the incubus 
of competition in coal mining. So much is generally recognized, but 
the means whereby integration may be attained are less apparent. 
The most practicable path leads toward the enlargement of the 
public utilities conception to embrace coal. 
We may define a public utility as a necessity which does not lend 
itself to competition. In such a category fall gas, water, and elec- 
tricity, the telephone service and traction systems of municipalities. 
In the case of these necessities, public regulation is substituted for 
the restraining influence of a competition that has been found 
inexpedient. Coal is a necessity which does not lend itself to com- 
petitive mining. 
In anthracite is found an interesting spokesman of this principle. 
The anthracite industry began with many competing units, but the 
smallness of the field made combination easy and led to the merging 
of the rival interests in a unified organization. The purpose of the 
combination, judged by the results, was twofold; to raise the price 
of anthracite and to increase the efficiency of mining. The disad- 
vantages of the first was commonly recognized, but not the advantages 
of the second, which were equally significant. Through its monop- 
olistic control of a recognized necessity, the combine years ago 
became a matter of public concern and the Government faced two 
alternatives in meeting the problem thereby raised — it could either 
recognize a combination in restraint of trade, and order its disinte- 
gration; or else accept the combination as a procedure essential to 
the proper handling of the resource, and impose suitable restrictions 
on the basis that the activity had become automatically a public 
utility. The first procedure was adopted and the combine was dis- 
solved in so far as its legal existence was concerned; but at bottom 
the combination persisted, because it was inherent in the nature of 
anthracite development and could not be legislated out of existence . 1 
The alternative chosen by the Government was impossible of execu- 
tion. It is open knowledge that the anthracite companies to-day 
operate in concert and fix prices by circular announcements at rates 
suitable for the effective operation of both high-cost and low-cost 
mines. As a result, anthracite is mined efficiently in spite of laws 
opposing the means to that end. 
The bituminous industry deals with a necessity that is lending 
itself less and less to competitive production. Competition is incom- 
1 Writes F. W. Taussig, in a different connection: “The large outstanding fact is the collapse of competi- 
tive industry. Combination and monopoly are the inevitable result of the machine processes and large- 
scale production. Legislation can not prevent monopoly. ... ” Principles of Economics, New York, 
1911, p. 442. 
