THE COAL MONOPOLY
Proof of the “coöperation” of the anthracite railroads is furnished by the ubiquitous presence of George F. Baker on the Board of Directors of the Reading, the Jersey Central, the Lackawanna, the Lehigh, the Erie, and the New York, Susquehanna & Western railroads, which together control nearly all the unmined anthracite as well as the actual tonnage. These roads have been an important factor in the development of the Money Trust. They are charged by the Department of Justice with fundamental violations both of the Sherman Law and of the Commodity clause of the Hepburn Act, which prohibits a railroad from carrying, in interstate trade, any commodity in which it has an interest, direct or indirect. Nearly every large issue of securities made in the last 14 years by any of these railroads (except the Erie), has been in connection with some act of combination. The combination of the anthracite railroads to suppress the construction, through the Temple Iron Company, of a competing coal road, has already been declared illegal by the Supreme Court of the United States. And in the bituminous coal field—the Kanawha District—the United States Circuit Court of Appeals has recently decreed that a similar combination by the Lake Shore, the Chesapeake & Ohio, and the Hocking Valley, be dissolved.