Item of Interest September 13, 1913 Issue

Items of Interest

Attorney-General McReynolds' first and most important attack on the "hard coal trust" was begun last week in Philadelphia with the filing of the civil suit for the dissolution of the Reading company's control of coal mining and coal-carrying railroads. The Reading company with its subsidiary and allied corporations, including the Central railroad of New Jersey and certain of their officers and directors, are charged by the federal government with violating both the Sherman antitrust law and the commodities clause of the interstate commerce act, in an attempt to monopolize the production and transportation of anthracite. This combination, controlling at the present time 63 per cent of the entire unmined deposits of anthracite and marketing about 30 per cent of the annual supply, will own or control in time, if not dissolved, the attorney-general warns, "every ton of commercially available anthracite known to exist." The suit is the second step of the department of justice to solve the "hard coal trust" situation since the decision of the supreme court last December canceling the so-called 65 per cent contracts and ordering the dissolution of the Temple Iron Company.

The federal court at New York city has been notified that the so-called coal-tar trust has complied with the court's decree in the government dissolution suit, and the combine is now considered legally dissolved. The dissolution decree ordered that contracts entered into by members of the combine be re-formed and the sale of stock completed within six months. The government alleged that the defendants attempted to monopolize the trade by obtaining control of a substantial part of the supply of coal-tar in the United States and of large productions of coal-tar from coke ovens, and by controlling competing companies and firms doing the business of purchasing coal-tar and manufacturing and marketing tarred felt, roofing and paving pitch, and other products of coal-tar.

Six million acres of withdrawn public lands were restored to entry during the months of May and June upon approval by the secretary of the interior of the recommendations of the United States geological survey. This action was the result of examination and classification of the lands by the survey, those restored either having been found not to be valuable for power sites, reservoirs, coal, phosphate, or potash deposits, or having been definitely valued as coal lands and rendered available for purchase under the coal land law.

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