coal fields had to pay nearly as high a price for coal as those 500 miles or more distant. Rates of transportation on coal mined by individual operators were made such that the latter could not afford to sell below the prices fixed by the pool, even if they had been so disposed. At the present time the situation has been modified by the long and short-haul clause of the Interstate Commerce law, by which the railroad is obliged to make its transportation rates somewhat proportionate to distance, and also by the passage of a law in the State of Pennsylvania, by which the acts of the anthracite-coal pool were declared illegal and punishable. Nominally, therefore, the pool is a thing of the past; but the practical fact is, that by secret or tacit agreement the various companies are not competing with each other any more now than in the days of the pool, and at points like New York or Buffalo, where two or more roads meet, the same prices are quoted by each different company.
Nor are the charges against the pool comprehended in its autocratic determination of the price of coal. To make production correspond with price, it was necessary at times