o keep down prices.

Many years ago these seven companies formed the famous anthracite-coal
pool. This was an agreement by which all the companies concerned agreed
to maintain a uniform selling price for coal at all important
distributing points where two or more of the companies came into
competition. Some of the prices which were fixed by the pool were
extremely arbitrary. Cities in Pennsylvania within an hour's ride of the
coal fields had to pay nearly as high a price for coal as those 500
miles or more distant. Rates of transportation on coal mined by
individual operators were made such that the latter could not afford to
sell below the prices fixed by the pool, even if they had been so
disposed. At the present time the situation has been modified by the
long and short-haul clause of the Interstate Commerce law, by which the
railroad is obliged to make its transportation rates somewhat
proportionate to distance, and also by the passage of a law in the State
of Pennsylvania, by which the acts of the anthracite-coal pool were
declared illegal and punishable. Nominally, therefore, the pool is a
thing of the past; but the practical fact is, that by secret or tacit
agreement the various companies are not competing with each other any
more now than in the days of the pool, and at points like New York or
Buffalo, where two or more roads meet, the same prices are quoted by
each different company.

Nor are the charges against the pool comprehended in its autocratic
determination of the price of coal. To make production correspond with
price, it was necessary at times to close collieries entirely, throwing
the miners out of employment. The individual operators, too, have no
love for the combination. Their profit depends more than any thing else
on the rate of transportation, and thus whether they shall make or lose
depends on the railroad companies. They claim that the railways base
their rates for carrying coal upon the principle of "charging what the
traffic will bear." This is a matter, however, which we can better
discuss in the next chapter.

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 f