People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1895 — COAL GOES UP AGAIN. [ARTICLE]

COAL GOES UP AGAIN.

THE HIGHWAY ROBBERS AT WORK ON THE PEOPLE. Th« Strike of the ‘'Dangerous Classes” Against the Welfare of the People Successfully Carried Oat —How Long WIU the People Submit? Within the last four weeks the price of coal was raised by order of the coal and railroad ring in the East about iwo dollars a ton. These pirates not only determine how much the American people shall be taxed to keep warm and save themselves from freezing to death, but their ring actually decrees the amount of coal the people shall be permitted to have, by regulating the “output.” All the anthracite coal mines are in five counties in Pennsylvania and six coal and railroad companies absolutely control the mines and the railroads leading to them. People owning coal lands in that region cannot mine the coal because the monopolies will not furnish them switches and other shipping facilities. As a result, these commercial pirates can do just as they please and force the price up beyond all reason. The miners in the anthracite receive about twenty cents a ton for mining the coal, and people in the Dakotas pay as high as sl7 a ton for it. In Milwaukee the price has been $4.75 and has now been raised by order of the Eastern coal ring to $6.50, with a prospect of an additional raise. The coal kings in order to maintain the price decide in their meetings how much coal shall be mined in a year, “regulating the output” they call it. The annual output is about 55,000,000 tons and figuring the unjust extortion of the ring at only three dollars a ton on the average, which is certainly a very low estimate, the “legal” robbery amounts to $150,000,000 A YEAR, or nearly as much as the total amount of tariff duties the government collects each year. That is the robbery on one commodity only. Now figure it on all necessities and then dear republican and democratic voter ask yourself how much longer you are going to play cat’s paw for the trusts, syndicates and other monopolists.—Milwaukee Advance.