Coal has gone up in price. Why? Because there is trouble in the mining-region.
Our civilization is horizontal rather than vertical. When country-people obtained wood from their own farms, and city people bought it of boatman or teamster, who brought to town a load of his own cutting, there was no trouble. Each man acted for himself. Now we spread out, and each acts for others. Coal goes far away. The owner consumes little for himself, and the miners still less. They work for a market and for wages, not for individual traffic and profit. For pay, railroads and ships transport the coal, though they have no direct interest in the ownership and digging. If, therefore, the miners are oppressed, and successfully demand higher wages for a day's work, or if the carriers raise their freight-tariff, it follows that either the consumer must pay more for his fuel, or the owner must furnish it at a loss.
It is not strange that workmen, seeing managers and stockholders living in luxury such as employees can not afford, should growl, and that their bark sometimes becomes a bite,—even though, by this process, the hydrophobia strikes not the rich owner and speculator, but men and women as poor as the coal-delvers themselves.
