f southern
Illinois, on which the St. Louis consumers depend, are united as the
Consolidated Coal Company. This latter corporation has "wrecked" many of
its mines for the purpose of limiting the supply and raising the price;
and has bought many mines of competing companies and closed them for the
same purpose. The Attorney-General of Illinois has been requested to
bring suit against this "trust" for the forfeiture of its charter.

In the Hocking Valley coal fields in Ohio, the Columbus, Hocking Valley
and Toledo Railway Company owns 10,000 acres of coal lands, and mined,
in 1887, 1,870,416 tons of coal. The coal in western Virginia is coming
into the hands of the Norfolk and Western Railroad Company, while the
coal of Alabama, of which so much has been noised abroad, has been
quietly gathered in by the Louisville and Nashville corporation. The
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, which owns 76,000 acres of coal lands,
and mined 1,145,000 tons in 1882, is owned by parties largely interested
in the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad system. West
Virginia has probably the most valuable untouched coal deposits of any
State in the Union, but these also are rapidly being gathered up by
railway corporations.

To sum up, in the words of one of the best informed authorities, the
coal business of the country is at the mercy of the railroads.

It is to be noted, however, that this is simply the result of natural
causes. Railway managers, in seeking to develop and place on a sound
basis the mineral properties which could furnish a heavy and profitable
traffic to their lines, have only done what they regarded as their duty
to the owners of their roads. And that this policy has effected a rapid
development of our resources is beyond question.

The combinations to restrict competition among bituminous coal producers
have been of a very different sort from those in force among the
anthracite producers. The soft-coal fields are so widely scattered that
it has never been possible to combine all the producers so as to control
prices by a single authority. Local combinations, however, controlling
all the fields of a single locality, have long been an important
feature of the trade, and have been able to control prices pretty
absolutely within their respective localities. The fact that the
principal item in the cost of coal is transportation, enables a
combination covering all the producers of a certain field to raise
prices very