Coal dealer

“ The record shows that the conditions of competition differ among the various localities. In some, coal dealers compete among themselves. In other localities, they also compete with the mechanical production of electrical energy and of natural gas. Some coal producers favor the code; others oppose it; and the record clearly indicates that this diversity of view arises from their conflicting and even antagonistic interests. The difference between producing coal and regulating its production is, of course, fundamental. ”

“ Under this arrangement the coal would receive much more handling—and each handling means so much additional slack and depreciation in value; a week would have to be allowed for a journey now possible in a day; the coal dealers would have to provide their own depôts and pay more for cartage, and they would have to order particular kinds of coal by the boat load instead of by the waggon load. ”

“ The plethora of his coal-bin is more to the credit of his wits than his morals. My mind is fully established in this thing; as a grafter he is the perfected article.
It may, however, be said in excuse for the car shortage, that the demand for coal cars synchronized with that of wheat, the rush for both being in the autumn and early winter. At first, the pioneer coal dealers in the villages and towns throughout the west, had neither the buildings wherein to store fuel nor the money to permit of their purchasing it, so that orders were seldom given until cold weather had actually set in. ”

“ The first cause is probably the most important, and this is particularly true of anthracite coals where a sliding scale of prices is used according to the season of the year. While market conditions serve as one of the principal reasons for coal storage, most power plants and manufacturing plants feel compelled to protect their coal supply from the danger of strikes, car shortages and the like, and it is customary for large power plants, railroads and coal companies themselves, to store bituminous coal. ”

“ The price of coals can however have but little effect upon the cost of the gas-lights; because the very refuse, or small coal, which pass through the screen at the pit’s mouth, and which cannot be brought into the market, nay, even the sweepings of the pit, which are thrown away, may be employed for the production of coal-gas. It makes no difference in what form the coal is used. ”

“ We do this as to wheat and meat; it is just as necessary to avoid injustice in the case of coal, and it is thoroughly practicable. The public should know the kind of coal it is buying, because it should buy the coal it needs. There need be no prohibition against the mining or selling of any coal, [4] but coal should sell in terms of its capacity to deliver heat. Some coal that is only a pint bottle is selling as a quart bottle. And the quart is hurt by the competition of the pint. A bill to effect such fuel inspection has been drafted and will be presented to Congress. ”

“ It is thus evident beyond dispute that the production of anthracite coal in this country is an industry uncontrolled by competition. To sum up: these seven great corporations own more than two thirds of the area in which workable anthracite coal is found: they mine and market directly the great bulk of the total production; the individual operators are dependent on the railways for getting their coal to a market; and the price at which they can afford to sell it depends on the railroad [36] rates. ”

“ The investigations include the possibility of making satisfactory commercial fuels from lignite or low-grade coals which do not stand shipment well, the benefiting of culm or slack coals which are wasted or sold at unremunerative prices, and the possibility of improving the efficiency of good coals. Some of the various forms of commercial briquettes, American and foreign, are shown in Fig. 2, Plate XX. After undergoing chemical analysis, the coal is elevated and fed to a storage bin, whence it is drawn through a chute to a hopper on the weighing scales. ”

“ Respondent, a Pennsylvania corporation, is engaged in the production of coal of specified grades, said to possess unique qualities, from its mines within that state and in selling it to consumers and dealers. It maintains a sales office in New York City and sells annually to its customers, 1,500,000 tons of its product, of which approximately 1,300,000 tons are delivered by respondent to some twenty public utility and steamship companies. The coal moves by rail from mine to dock in Jersey City, thence in most instances by barge to the point of delivery. ”

“ His coalyard consists of two buildings, one for an office and the other a gathering place for workers, railroad tracks upon which carloads of coal are delivered by the railroad, and bins for the different types of coal. Respondent pays those who work as unloaders an agreed price per ton to unload coal from the railroad cars. These men come to the yard when and as they please and are assigned a car to unload and a place to put the coal. They furnish their own tools, work when they wish and work for others at will. ”

“ It is unnecessary for the present purpose to go into detail as to the provisions of these contracts. In the main they were made with coal companies owned principally by the railroad companies and contain the same general provisions. Among others, the purchase price of anthracite coal above a certain size is to be 65 per cent of the average price, computed monthly, at certain tide points, of coal of the same quality and size. All the coal mined by the contracting operators is sold, shipments to be made as called for by the purchasers. ”

“ It further appears that, in addition to the great coal-mining companies subsidiary to one or another of the defendant carrier companies, there are a large number of independent coal operators whose aggregate production from coal lands, in part leased from the railroad companies or the railroad-controlled coal-producing companies, amounts to about 20 per cent of the annual anthracite supply. ”

“ In the north of England a powerful combination has long existed among the coal-owners, by which the public has suffered in the payment of increased price. The late examination of evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, has explained its mode of operation, and the Committee have recommended, that for the present the sale of coal should be left to the competition of other districts. ”

“ This acquisition placed the Holding Company in a position of dominating control not only over two great competing interstate railroad carriers but also over two great competing coal companies, engaged extensively in mining and selling anthracite coal, which must be transported to interstate markets over the controlled interstate lines of railway. ”

“ The price is advancing each year as the supply is getting scarcer and the wood brought from greater distances. There is no way by which coal or wood could be brought here from other places. The recent discovery of a deposit of coal in the Paloo region, two days’ journey from Harput, aroused hopes that this problem might be partially solved, but the coal has proved to be of inferior quality and hardly worth bringing here. ”

“ Under these arrangements purchasers from the Coal Company who ship coal from the mines designate the destination on the shipping papers. If they designate Coalberg, the coal is sent there on railroad cars. It is unloaded to the storage pile where it is kept until ordered out by the owner. It is then reloaded into railroad cars, and when it is reshipped there is a new billing to the new destination. Most of the coal, after it has been stored, goes to states other than New Jersey. Some, however, is marketed in New Jersey. ”

“ We have been content to go without insurance as to a coal reserve. Each day has brought its daily supply. There was no thought of railroads stopping or mines closing down, so that large storage facilities have not been provided, and, indeed, we would rebel at paying for our coal the added cost of caring for it outside its native warehouse. We have not thought in terms of apprehension, but, as always, in the calm certainty that the stream of supply would flow without ceasing. In some way there would be coal into which we could drive our shovels when the need was felt. ”

“ To the poor people who live in the vicinity of the breakers these heaps of refuse coal are an unmixed blessing. Pieces of good coal are always being thrown out inadvertently with the waste, and the bony coal that is discarded is not by any means without value as a fuel; indeed it makes a very respectable fire. So, too, one can obtain, with a screen, from the culm heap quite a little percentage of material that will burn. ”

“ And in this country, with our severe climate, coal is all-important as a factor of domestic economy, as well as a necessity to manufacturing and metallurgical industries. The total cost to the consumers of the coal used in the United States every year (about 120,000,000 tons) , calling the average retail price $4.00 per ton, is nearly $500,000,000, or over $8.00 per annum for every man, woman, and child in the country. ”

“ That the operator receiving the foreign railway fuel cars, private cars, or company fuel cars may operate his mine to a fuller capacity, and thereby reduce the cost of coal per ton, resulting in an increased profit on his commercial coal. ”

“ A representative of a power company operating throughout the state of Georgia * * * using from 30,000 to 125,000 tons of coal annually, has stated that the organization and operation of Appalachian Coals, Inc., will not restrain competition in the markets in which his company buys coal. ”

“ The experience of domestic buyers of coal would seem to indicate, either that the picker boys do not do their whole duty or that the picking [189] machines have not yet been made perfect. But it must be remembered that the separation of slate and bony coal from good material is made only in a rough and general way in the mine, and that a very large percentage of the output, as it reaches the breaker, is unfit for use. To clean and separate this material thoroughly, therefore, requires much labor, and extreme care and skill. ”

“ Temporary upward jerks of the price of coal have very little immediate effect upon supply, as the surveying, conveyance, boring, sinking, and fully opening of a new coal estate is a work of some years.
The Royal Commissioners estimate that the North-American coal-fields contain an untouched coal area equal to seventy times the whole of ours. Further investigation is likely to increase rather than diminish this estimate. ”

“ But from every point we look we reach this fact, that our coal trade is one which develops itself according to laws that we are perfectly powerless to control; if it seems to promise a less rapid increase here, it is only that it may spread abroad with accelerated vigor elsewhere; if it is our slave in some aspects, it seems as if it were our master in others.
Finally, we have to ask, What of our export coals? Rapid as has been the growth of our total production during the last twenty-three years, the growth of our export of coals has been greater still. ”

“ For what are we doing every day but devising fresh appliances to exhaust with ever greater rapidity the hoard of coal? There is just a certain number of tons of coal lying in the earth, and when these are gone there can be no more forthcoming. There is no manufacture of coal in progress at the present time. ”

“ The exhaustion of so vast a coal bed is a practical impossibility, and the questions that engage the attention of the mining engineer in these regions are not so much questions of the economy of coal as they are questions of the economy of labor. The coal lies near the surface, and the outcrops on the flanks of the hills and banks of the [194] rivers are so numerous that most of the mining can be, and is, done by drift above water level. The outlay of capital required in opening a mine is therefore very small, marketable coal being obtained at almost the first blow of the pick. ”

“ Coming now to the merits of the case, the circuit court found the facts to be as follows:
'It appears that bituminous coal, such as is mined in the No. 8 district, is classified by the complainant, for tariff purposes, as (a) railway fuel, being coal sold to railroad companies; (b) lake-cargo coal, that is, coal intended for shipment by lake to points in the northwest; and (c) commercial coal, comprising coal for commercial and domestic use, not included in the first two classes. ”

“ It would clearly appear that the coal business may be stabilized, not wholly, but in a very large measure, in some of the western fields, [3] if the public does not regard its supply of coal as it does its supply of domestic water, which requires only that the faucet shall be opened to bring forth a gushing supply. ”

“ Probably no industry has suffered so keenly from car shortage as that of coal-mining. The only people who have received windfalls from this regretable state of affairs were the dishonest yard-masters who, unknown to the railway officials, did a secret but withal brisk business with the rival coal companies that bid for cars. It took a goodly slice off the profits of each car of coal to grease the large palm of the yard-master. And who in this pushful, practical age has ever heard of a car spotter in the railway yards buying a ton of coal? ”