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48 THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
• PERTINENT PARAGRAPHS. •
The West Virginia supreme court has decided,
in the case of the Kingwood Coal Co., against the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., that the courts
are competent to give effective force to their judgments,
in cases where discrimination is charged,
and secure fair treatment to shippers in the matter
of cars. Judge Goff, in the United States circuit
court, held that ears must be distributed
among the companies without discrimination in
proportion to their output, and ordered the railroad
to supply 31 per cent, of the cars it had on
hand to the Kingwood company, that being its
share of the production of the district, whereas
only 18 per cent, of the cars had been sent there
previously.
The United States supreme court has decided
that the state of Pennsylvania cannot collect a tax
upon Pennsylvania coal after it is shipped. The
decision was rendered in the case of the Delaware,
Lackawanna & Western Railroad Co. vs. the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania, which grew out of
an attempt of the state authorities to levy a tax
of five mills on the value of coal mined by the
company in the state and held in Buffalo, Chicago
and other cities outside of Pennsylvania. The supreme
court of the state upheld the tax but that
decision was reversed by action of the higher
court, the opinion of which was written by Justice
Peckham.
Mr. R. C. Wharton, who has been manager of
sales for the Sunday Creek Coal Co. since its reorganization,
recently tendered his resignation to
take effect to-day. He will be succeeded by Mr.
H. H. Heiner, of St. Paul, vice-president and general
manager of the St. Paul & Western Coal Co.,
and the Boston Coal & Dock Wharf Co., of Duluth,
Minn., subsidiary companies of the Sunday Creek
Co. Mr. F. C. Bryan, until recently with the Norfolk
& Western railroad as division freight agent
at Columbus, O., has been selected to succeed Mr.
Heiner at St. Paul.
The Cuyahoga county grand jury, sitting at
Cleveland, returned indictments against 11 members
of the executive committee of the Cleveland
Retail Coal Dealers' Association. Those indicted
are H. G. Brayton, secretary; J. J. Phillii s, Charles
A. Albright, J. V. N. Yates, Charles Zettlemeyer,
F. M. Cowdery, I. C. Goff, William Schafer, Henry
Abels, E. C. Brown and E. D. Thomas. They are
charged with restricting trade, preventing competition
and fixing prices in violation of the Valentine
anti-trust law.
The Maple Hill Coal Co., the W. J. Hamilton
Coal Co., and the Twentieth Century Coal Co., all
of whose headquarters are at Columbus, O., have
combined their interests, and in the future, the
Hamilton Coal Co. will handle the output of the
properties of the other two, which are located at
Redfield and Nelsonville.
Coal production in the United States has increased
since 1850 by 4,180 per cent. Great Britain
held the first place in supplying the world
with coal up to 1899. Then America seized the
primacy, and last year the 600,000 employes engaged
in the industry mined a million tons more
than Great Britain, or two-thirds of the output
of the globe. The ultimate value of this aggregate
of combustible carbon to the retailer is estimated
at over $2,000,000,000.
The New Mexico Railroad & Coal Co., which
owns and operates 457 miles of road, with the
main line from Liberal, Kan., to El Paso, connecting
the Rock Island system with the Southern
Pacific & Mexican Central, has been purchased
by Phelps, Dodge & Co. With tne purchase there
was acquired all the coal mines, timber and mineral
ore, consisting of 25,000 acres of land, controlled
by a subsidiary company.
Options involving practically all of the coal
mines north of the Kiskiminetas river in the Allegheny
river valley are being taken. Sixty-seven
coal companies, including the Kittanning Coal Co.
are involved, and it is estimated that $6,000,000
will figure in the deals. Some of the options have
been closed, the names of E. C. Robert and W. D.
Ward, of Buffalo, appearing.
The total production of Pennsylvania anthracite
coal to date is estimated at 1,696,963,748 tons.
The bituminous production of the state is put at
1,448,197,679 tons. These outputs combined form.
56 per cent, of the total output of the country.
The combined value, taken on a basis of $4 per
ton for anthracite and $3 for bituminous, aggregates
$10,232,448,029.
W. C. Jutte, until recently general manager for
C. Jutte & Co., committed suicide at Atlantic City,
N. J., on May 24, by shooting himself. He had
been suffering from nervous trouble for some time
and had visited a number of health resorts without
obtaining relief. He was 45 years old and
for 25 years was identified with the Jutte coal interests,
founded by Charles Jutte.
The Consolidated Coal & Mining Co., of Cincinnati,
capitalized at $500,000, has made an assignment,
with assets of $25,000 and liabilities of
$40,000.