The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 11, 1918, Page 10

State Sells Coal at Ten Cents a Ton But the Public Doesn’t Buy It at That in Cblo.rado---That’s What the State | Sells it For to the Coal Barons, Out of State-Owned Mines - ‘A typical exterior view of a Colorado coal mine, the McGregor mine at Milnor, Colo. “glope” or oblique tunnel, or by a shaft, straight down into the ground. This mine is entered by a slope. and up to the tipple or loading platform, from which it wiil be loaded into the railroad cars shown on the tr BY STAFF CORRESPONDENT OW much did you pay for your Colorado coal this winter—$5 a ton, $8, $10, or possi- ? bly more?- Did you notice that the price was higher than a year ago—$1 at least— and that it was hard to get at that? And did the coal dealer tell you that the reason coal was so high was on account of the war, and because labor cost so much more, and so forth? If so (and thousands of American citizens have bhad this experience) maybe you would ‘be inter- ested in knowing where the coal companies got their coal, what they paid for it and what they paid the men who mined it. * Much of the coal that is used in the West comes from the state of Colorado, and a large part of this comes from mines owned by the state of Colorado. The state owns in all 473,752 acres of coal land. Estimates of the amount of coal that these lands contain run all the way from 829,000,000 tons to 3,316,000,000 tons. About 500,000 tons of this state- owned coal, enough to provide winter fuel for a good many hundred thousand people in the Middle West, is mined every year. But the mining isn’t done by the state of Colo- rado. The state owns the mines, but it lets private enterprise take the coal out. WHAT THE MINERS GET FOR DIGGING OUT COAL Ten years ago, when the price of coal was low, this coal was sold by the state of Colorado to the ¢ ‘coal companies for 10 cents a ton. A year ago, “when the price had advanced considerably, the ‘state still got 10 cents a ton, and today, with the -retail prices of coal out of sight and coal hard to get at any price, the state gets just the same price from the coal companies—10 cents a ton. . The coal companies have to mine the coal, how- ever, and this is where the extra expense comes in that puts coal prices up so high, they claim. Let us see about this. Approximately 80 per cent of the coal miners of Colorado are paid on a tonnage basis—so much for each ton of coal that is taken out of a mine. When the war came along and prices of everything went up, the coal miners de- This fact-story from Colorado, while it tells of conditions in that state relative to coal, is universal in its application. Every state has been just as foolish as Colorado in giving away or ‘‘farming out’’ its natural resources to . private exploiters. And every state, like Colo- rado, is now alive to the mneed of a change ‘in public policy in regard to natural resources. The doectrine of pub- lic ownership and operation of public utilities and public ownership and de- ° velopment of natural resources during the last year has made more progress in the United States than it did in all the ten years immediately prior. The war has shown the necessity of extensions of government and federal control of those industries and utilities which by their nature are monopolies. All we have to do’is to maintain the economie . ground won during the war, and extend it by constant new annexations. PAGE TEN -and won an advance to 83 cents. > Minee:i are entered in three manners, eltfier by a tunnel into a side hill, by a The picture shows a string of coal cars being hauled out acks. manded a higher wage scale to meet living expenses. They were well organized and they got their in- crease. The office of the state coal mine inspector of Colorado has issued a statement showing just what this increase in wages on the tonnage basiz has amounted to during the past year. In the Trinidad district miners were getting 58 cents a ton Jamuary 1, 1917; they now are getting 78 cents. In the Walsen "~ district they were getting 63 cents a ton In the Canon district they were getting 83 cents a ton, and got an increase to $1.09. In the three districts the ad- vance averaged slightly more than 20 cents, amounting to an increase of less than one-third above their former wages. 2 A small proportion of the ‘mine workmen, about 20 per cent, are paid day wages. These men in the past year have secured average increases of $2 a day. Their wages now range from $4.15 to $5.30. MINE BARON’S ARGUMENT & ) DOES NOT SOUND GOOD : : But with an increase of a little more than 20 cents per ton to the miner, and with no increase at all to the state of Colorado, which owns the coal, the coal barons and’ railroads have combined in extorting unheard of prices from the' congunier. Coal at the mine tipple has been advanced 64 cents on the basis of a 20-cent increase to the miner. This is the smallest increase in the good quality coals." Others range to much higher figures, The railroads have put their coal tariffs up. Shortage of cars has helped to maintain an artificial ‘price out of all reason. - Finally the railroads fell down so “badly in furnishing cars that the government had to. take over the entire railroad systems of the country. : They will tell you in Colorado that more coal was.