prices have varied from the average. In egg coal the circulars quote the May rate as $3.90. This was the quotation in 1889, while in 1888 it was $4.00, showing a fall in four years of ten cents a ton. Stove coal quoted at $1.15 was the same price in 1889 and $4.25 in 1888; in that also a decline from 1888 of ten cents a ton. Chestnut coal is quoted at $3.90, as against $4.00 in 1889 and $4.25 in 1888, a decline of thirty-five cents a ton. Compare the May quotations of grate, egg, stove, and chestnut coal in 1892 with the May quotations of 1888, and we see that in grate alone has there been an advance. There has been a fall of ten cents a ton in egg and stove and of thirtyfive cents a ton in chestnut.

These latest reports are cited to show that there has been no advance over that which ruled five years ago. As a matter of fact they show that coal in its various forms has kept an even pace, in some years a trifle more and in others a trifle less, the average about the same, subject to the fluctuations of trade and those mutations in the supply and demand from which no business, commercial, financial, or railway, is free. These figures show also that the Reading railway is none the less disposed to conservative methods now than when it was a part of a struggling system. And in these quotations will be found the best assurance of the sincerity of the management when the declaration is made that the economies of administration will not alone be to the security of the investor, but to the advantage of the consumer.

If the argument were sound that the policy of the Reading railway militated against the public, such a deplorable result would be a novelty in industrial annals. We see what the consolidation of harmonious interests has done in the building of our Western commonwealths, the opening of the way to millions of homes which would have been sealed but for the aid of railways, powerful and consolidated, able to do what would have been impossible by weak, isolated, and helpless corporations. There is no instance where the consolidation--that is to say, the strengthening-of the railway has not been of benefit to the people. There is no reason to suppose that the Reading consolidation will be an exception to the unbroken law and be inimical to the people. While it is true that the anthracite-coal traffic is an element of great importance, it must be remembered that it is only an incident in the problems of the Reading road. The company has other interests than anthracite coal. If its policy contemplates a permanent system, the becoming a part of the structure of our national welfare, it must accept the fact that anthracite coal is a tem

porary and diminishing value, that it will last our time and perhaps two or three generations more, but that other agencies must be cultivated for the fulfilment of its work. A large proportion of its tonnage is anthracite coal, and will be for a long time. It is by no means the major part, and the proportion in the general volume of its business will lessen from year to year. The Reading railway will carry coal as it carries wheat and sugar and oil, but it is not upon the coal traffic that the future of the system depends.

There are many discussions as to the mistakes made in the capitalization of the various companies in the Reading system, the wisdom of purchases of what might be called dormant properties in past years, and the financial burdens involved in the necessity of holding them for development. These discussions do not apply to the present Reading management. It is in the presence of conditions which it did. not create and which it is striving to strengthen and amend by every agency known to a prudent business direction of affairs. The Reading management is charged so to govern its properties that obligations. shall be met and the rights of investors assured. This, as experience shows, cannot be done by abandoning one interest to suit the whim of another. It can only be continued with due regard to the rights of all. In the management of the coal supply, it is done first by terminating the squandering methods under which such a large percentage of mining has been sheer waste. It will be done by the prevention of spasmodic production and the ignoring of the laws of supply and demand, which in coal as in everything else is sure to bring improvidence. This will provent the inadequacy of prices, and while maintaining the investors' rights, assure steady and well-paid work.

Over-production has ever been the bane of all industry. The recurring periods of ruin and depression which have swept over the country have been invariably accompanied by the continued production of some important article of commerce beyond the requirements of the market, whether of cotton and corn, the products of the soil, or of the iron and copper and silver from our mines. The same inexorable law applies to anthracite coal. Nature has imposed peculiar and unusual limitations upon the production and consumption of anthracite. These limitations govern and control both supply and demand, and must be recognized, either willingly or unwillingly, by all concerned. For a brief season in each year the requirements of the markets of the country absorb for consumption upward of four millions of tons per month for a few months, or at the aggregate rate

of about fifty millions of tons per annum; whereas the aggregate consumption scarcely exceeds the rate of forty millions of tons per year. To supply the extraordinary demands of the fall season, the great producing companies have developed a capacity for production equal to the supply required at times of the greatest activity; but it is obvious that if the production should be continued, regardless of the demand, at the rate of the full capacity of all the mines, it would not be long before all the evils of disastrous over-production which I have pointed out would be upon us. The entire storage capacity of the country would fill up and overflow in a month or two, and coal could not be sold for a dollar a ton nor for any price; it could not be given away. This ruin and destruction would stop all mining except in the most favorable localities, throwing every producer into bankruptcy. And enforced cessation of mining would soon produce the real stringency which would advance the price of coal to exorbitant rates for the benefit of the few who might be able to withstand the flood of disaster, and the hope of relief would surely be a vain one, since the experiences of the past fifteen or twenty years would forbid new capital from investment in the hazardous business of mining.

The enormous development of the mining capacity of the anthracite regions and the millions of capital invested in the mines to enable them to produce coal at the highest rate required by the market forbid that they should lie idle for a moment at any time when the product can be sold at a moderate profit. The interest account accumulates too rapidly upon these enormous investments to allow the producers to wait, even if they were so inclined, for an unnatural market stimulated by a short supply. There always has been and must continue to be a supply of mined coal in excess of the immediate demand, except perhaps occasionally for very short periods of particular sizes. I have not alluded to the competition of bituminous coal which is present everywhere, but if there were no other reasons, its presence in every market operates as a prohibition upon any unreasonable advance in the price of anthracite coal, even if the power and disposition to make such an advance existed, which is impossible under any condition of things. To conclude on this point, it is safe to say that the peculiar and unusual limitations which nature has imposed upon the production and consumption of anthracite coal are likely to forbid the folly of over-production, with its train of disaster, on the one hand, and will certainly prevent any attempt, on the other hand, to advance the price of anthracite coal beyond the point of a reasonable profit.

Upon one other point I think a word may be profitably added. In the development and augmentation of local industries along its lines lies the path of prosperity for the future railway system. The concentration of the industries of the country in and about the large centres of population has been largely brought about by the establishment of inadequate rates for transportation at competitive points and the maintenance of proportionately high rates at local interior points which became necessary to preserve a sufficient average revenue to support the transportation system of the country. The time has now arrived when the material reduction of what are called through competitive rates has reached its limit, and the competition of the future will be, not the competition of the railroads among themselves for the same traffic, but the competition of the communities along the several lines of railroad with other communities along other lines for the markets of the country; and that community which not served by lines of railroad reaching all parts of the country, at rates commensurate with those enjoyed by other communities on other lines, must fall behind in the race for progress, and the railroad which serves it must follow in their wake. Perceiving its duty to the communities upon whose prosperity its own depends, the management of the Reading railway has sought to equip it with all the means for entering upon the broader field of competition which the future is sure to open; and in doing so, it has not overlooked the necessity of acquiring access to all the sources of supply which enter into the industries along its lines and to the markets to which their products must be carried.

Finally, to rescue the reading management from complications which we have accepted but not created, to give the Reading system its standing among the natural necessary transportation systems of the Middle States, to make the road an element of strength to every national and local interest, industrial as well as financial, is the underlying thought of those who consummated the Reading leases. Experience thus far confirms the wisdom and equity of that transaction; and when it is understood in all its relations and ramifications and scen likewise in the light of experience, there is no apprehension as to the reasonable and discerning judgment of the country.

A. A. MCLEOD.

A GLANCE AT THE EUROPEAN ARMIES.

OVER eighteen millions of men trained to arms stand ready for battle in Europe. The labor of the highest intellects is diverted

from better channels to the details of war. National economics is no longer the single, if difficult, study of yore. It is complicated with a problem awful in its intensity. The noblest work of the world, from the philosophical or the humanitarian standpoint, is perverted to ignoble uses. A world in arms seems to enforce the truth of Martin Luther's odd dictum: "Der Krieg ist an sich selbst etwas Göttliches, da er ein Weltgesetz ist." In the past, war has in truth been the great civilizer; but it should to-day yield its province to education. War has been an incentive to progress; it now clogs its wheels. "Die Waffen nieder!" is no idle cry. If disarmament does not come by some process of arbitration now only dreamed of, it must come by starvation or by a cataclysm. Civilization marches fast, and in quite other channels than it used to do; war is now but its ally. We are approaching the time when the Geneva arbitration will become a leaven to the political kneading of the Continent. It was a difficult first step, even between peoples of the same blood; among the diverse tongues of Europe such a triumph of civilized common-sense is not yet possible. But the seed is sown, and the harvest, though not at hand, will be gathered in due time. Even Moltke, the great apostle of war, confessed to faith in eventual rarely-interrupted peace.

Meanwhile to what are these eighteen million soldiers looking for ward? Europe has never been so perfectly prepared for war; nor, curiously, has she ever seen a time when soldiers were more loath to fight. There exists a marked and universal dread of war, coupled with an unexampled ability to wage it. Not that there is a lack of stomach; the morale of the leading armies is of the best. But Europe stands aghast at her own weapons. War is quasi-suicide; and Europe gazes at the blade she holds against her vitals and shrinks from the thrust. The dread is born of the certainty that a war will be a general one, of the uncertainty of its issue. Even France, despite her of war, for it is a law of the

"There is something holy in the very nature universe."

2 "Down with arms!"