COAL - Clpdigital.org

28 THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
The company's holding in coal lands would be very
little reduced by disposition of this 8,000-acre
tract. leaving as it would upward of 150,000 acres
of coal so favorably located for railway outlet as
to permit of development, profitable in the fullest
sense. Competitors of the Pittsburgh Coal Co.
have been paying from $1,500 to $1,800 an acre
for contiguous tracts. This coal has been out­
stripping all other tracts in Western Pennsylvania
in accruing value whilst it lay in the earth.
The Pittsburgh district is a natural market for
a gigantic bulk of coal in the more than 150,000
acres referred to. Consumption in this district
must of necessity greatly increase in the near fu­
ture and from year to year for endless decades.
The gas supply is waning. It must now be
brought from distant fields. Almost yearly its
cost must be increased, destining its price to soon
reach so prohibitive a figure that it will no longer
be feasible to utilize it as an economical fuel for
our mills and factories and domestic use as well.
The Pittsburgh district is bound to not only hold
firmly its industrial supremacy, but to broaden
and foster it with its own coal the chief working
force. The Pittsburgh coal field is the district's
natural fuel supply and values are bound to grow
and grow year by year.
The directors in the Pittsburgh Coal Co. have
in our judgment acted most wisely in retaining
in its treasury the earnings in excess of require­
ments for bond interests and other fixed charges,
thus actually strengthening the financial condition
of the company in an off year instead of depleting
its treasury by the payment of dividends drawn
in part from previous years 1 earnings; and thus
by conservatism at this time bringing the company
nearer the full realization of its geographical and
other natural advantages. Competitors freely
assent and none will gainsay that the company
stands to-day with the greatest resources and pros­
pects of any bituminous producer in the world.
* * *
Or ALL THE FIASCOS ever made by labor agitators
and industrial parasites, that of Eugene V. Debs
and Daniel De Leon at Chicago, recently, deserves
the palm. These two flimflammers of honest work­
ingmen spent several months in concocting a
scheme to wreck the American Federation of
Labor and the large organizations affiliated with
it—particularly the United Mine Workers and the
Amalgamated Association. Their idea was to
drive every decent man outside of the pale of or­
ganized labor and turn what were left into social­
ists of the Most-Berkmann brand. They deluged
the industrial centers of the country with calls
and appeals and moved every spring they could
command to get together a nice little nucleus for
a permanent graft. They promised those who
would do homage to them conditions that would
put Utopia to shame. There was no inducement
too big to hold out. They had everything within
reach that down-trodden labor could have any use
for and were prepared to show their disciples how
they had been fooled by the leaders they had pre­
viously pinned their faith to. But the fish didn't
bite. Every journal in the country devoted to
the interests of labor warned the workingman to
steer clear of the Debs gang. Every intelligent
workman warned his less intelligent brethren, and
as a result, the section of the country east of the
Mississippi river didn't send a corporal's guard
of real workingmen to the convention. A few
thousand red-flag socialists were represented but
the bulk of the representation was furnished by
the Western Federation of Miners, who became
interested largely in the hope of doing something
to show their animosity to the United Mine Work­
ers. But they, even, could not stomach the doc­
trines of Debs et al. The result was that after
listening to as much as they could stand, they
proceeded to take the bull by the horns and for­
cibly suppress it. Debs, with an elephant on his
hands, was powerless and he and his associates
were forced to swallow the humiliation of seeing
every plan, idea and candidate for office brought
forth by them, overwhelmingly defeated. The
western miners gobbled the convention, Debs, De
Leon and all, though the latter were ultimately
rejected as being utterly indigestible. Verily, it
was a fitting end for the wreckers who originated
the scheme.
* * *
A STEP IN THE BIGHT DIRECTION, however belated,
is that being taken by many coal companies hav­
ing isolated mines, of paying by check instead of
with cash. Other industrial concerns, including
some important railways, are adopting the same
system which is the only safe and sane one. Ex-