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Show heavy bimiPn . of expense that coiupeiitio'i places upon them, are satisfied with a profit cf a dol'ar a 'con. Some of thtm claim cow to be getting only 50 cents a ton, while others are apparently apparent-ly getting the lust dollar that they can sneeze from their customers, cus-tomers, but that doesn't matter for the purpose of this illustrn-! illustrn-! tion. Inasmuch as 1 a ton ' profit to the retailer represents a : sam sufficiently large to make I many eoul dealers wealthy, we I will assume that 50 cents a ton is about what it ccsts to take coal from the cars in Detroit and deliver it ' to the consumers, though this is undoubtedly excessive. ex-cessive. That would make the cost of anthracite coal to the consumer in Detroit, $2.40 a ton, notwithstanding notwith-standing the fact .that the miner's wages would have been doubled. This is a practical illustration I of what Socialism would do for. 'the coal industry. Is there any flaw in the reasoning? Is there anything visionary or improbable about it? And who would suffer and who would be benefitted if it were to be applied? j SOCIALISM'S CLAIMS- The doctrines of Socialism are j becoming more widely known and adhered to each year. They 'hold out a hope of betterment to the working classes that is ex-jtremely ex-jtremely inviting, and there is J much of good in the teachings, j I In. order that our readers mayi : understand the trend of Social- j istic thought, we herewith present pre-sent an article from, a recent : j issue of the Detroit Times on the coal situation, which contains in, a nutshell the Socialistic pro-, posal for the solving cf current : industrial problems: First of all, if the people through the government, jwned the coal mines, better wages would be paid to the miners. The miners now receive 90 cents a ton. No one pa" tell what wages wag-es the government could afford to pay, but it seems fair to assume as-sume that it could double the miner's wages and make the cost of bringing coal to the surface sur-face of the earth $1.80 a ton in-' stead of 90 cents. The coal having been., brought to the surface of the earth, the next step would be to take it to market. There is where the railroads owned by the government govern-ment would come into play . It would be idle to try to give the exact cost of th'2joperatiM,hut some idea of it, may be obtained from the extortion that is now practised by railroad companies owned by private individuals. The testimony of a railroad man before the interstate commerce commission the other day isii-formative isii-formative on this point. He said that the cost of hauling an average av-erage freight train from New i York to Chicago is $240, while the railroads chai'ge 88,600 for hauling the freight that the train carries. I The railroads now change about 1.50 a ton for hauling coal from th; mines to Detroit, so it "may be said that about one-fifteenth of this sum, or 10 cents, is whai it would cost the ' gov- ernment to ship coal over its j own railroads. i The next step would be to deliver de-liver it to the consumers. Here again the government would take the place of the retailers. Under private ownership there is a great deal of waste in this process, pro-cess, because there are scores of dealers, each striving for bis profit, where one the governmentwould govern-mentwould do better. They are under heavy expense for office rent, advertising and a thousand and one other things that could be eliminated if there were no competition. Now let us see what would be the cost of taking the coal from the cars and delivering it to the consumers, the useless expense of competition havingbeen eradicated. erad-icated. In normal times the private retail re-tail dealers, notwithstanding the' |