e_, and keep the price up as long as possible. On this
side of the water the question was at once canvassed whether a
combination could be formed among the different American companies
to prevent competition and support the price. Evidently the failure
of this scheme has not discouraged the makers of monopolies.

It is appropriate here, too, to make reference to the enormous profits
which the owners of the copper mines of the country are receiving, apart
from the special influence of this great syndicate. The richest and most
valuable copper mines in the world lie on the southern shore of Lake
Superior. The Calumet and Hecla Company, which works one of the richest
deposits of native copper ever found, has a capital stock of $2,500,000,
on which it has paid, since 1870, $30,000,000 in dividends. The reports
of these companies to their stockholders show that the present cost of
refined copper at the mines is as low as 4 cents per pound, and its
cost, delivered in the New York market, is only 53/4 cents. Probably the
officers of these companies are right in their belief that in no other
mines of the world can copper be produced so cheaply. But the question
that comes with force to every thinking man is: If the wealth of the ore
in these mines is so much greater than that in any other that it can be
produced at so much less cost, does there not exist here a natural
monopoly, of which the owners of these mines are getting the sole
benefit? And, again, by what right does the chief benefit from this rich
deposit accrue to the few men who own the mines, rather than to the many
men in all parts of the world who wish to use their product?

Great and important as is the copper monopoly, of far greater importance
to us than any and all the combinations in the metal industries are the
monopolies which control the price of coal. We do not often realize how
intimately connected is our nineteenth-century civilization with the
store of fuel laid up for us in distant geologic ages. And in this
country, with our severe climate, coal is all-important as a factor of
domestic economy, as well as a necessity to manufacturing and
metallurgical industries. The total cost to the consumers of the coal
used in the United States every year (about 120,000,000 tons), calling
the average retail price $4.00 per ton, is nearly $500,000,000, or over
$8.00 per annum for every man, woman, and child in the country. Surely,
then, the stat