s believed that, in some cases at
least, an honest attempt has been made to mine and sell the coal at
merely a fair profit. But in days to come it will not be so directly for
the interest of the railways to deal liberally with their patrons as at
present. Other men of less breadth and principle and more ready to grasp
at a chance for enormous profits may control the company's affairs; and
if that happens, the opportunity to take advantage of the absence of
competition and raise the price of coal will be utilized.

A brief review of the actual status of the coal production of the West
and South will help us to a clear appreciation of the case. The Missouri
Pacific Railway Company, through subsidiary companies, extracted from
its mines in Missouri and the Indian Territory, during 1887, 1,618,605
tons of coal. Through its control of transportation rates, private
operators have been compelled to sell coal at the company's prices in
the market. The company has recently purchased large tracts of coal
lands in Colorado, on which it is opening mines. The Atchison, Topeka,
and Santa Fe, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Denver and New
Orleans, the Union Pacific, and the Denver and Rio Grande Railway
companies are also heavily interested in the Colorado coal mines. The
last company has long held a bonanza in the monopoly of the coal mining
and transportation for the Colorado silver-mining and smelting
districts. Though the other companies, to which the Rock Island should
probably be added, come in as competitors, there can be no doubt that
their active competition will be of short duration. The Wyoming coal
fields are being worked by the Union Pacific and the Chicago and
Northwestern companies, while the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy and a
company supposed to be closely connected with the Northern Pacific are
preparing to take the field at an early date. On the Pacific coast the
coal trade has long been a monopoly in the hands of the Oregon Railway
and Navigation Company, who have kept the prices in San Francisco just
below the point at which it becomes profitable to import Australian
coal. Other railways are now preparing to reach the coal fields, but can
we doubt that the competition to which the coal consumers are looking
with eager anticipation will prove evanescent? Returning to the East, we
find the coal mines of northern Illinois all held by a single company,
which has full control of the traffic; while the mines o