coal: the resource and its full utilization. 
2a 
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 limitation 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 pooling 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 utilization 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 small factor 
in the ultimate cost to the public. That is evident in the contrast 
between one dollar 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 the exhaustion of cheaply mined 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 
