This concentration of coal lands and coal mining in the hands of great corporations, aside from its tendency to stifle healthy competition, is productive of many benefits. Coal can be mined much cheaper when the mining is done on a large scale. This is the rule, indeed, in all productive industries. An enterprise backed by the combined capital of many individuals is more certain to become successful and permanent than an enterprise inaugurated by, and carried on with, the entire capital of a single individual. Especially is this the rule in a business attended with as much risk as is the business of coal mining. One person may put his entire fortune of two or three hundred thousand dollars into a single colliery. A depression in the coal trade, a strike among the miners, an explosion, or a fire would be very apt to bring financial ruin on him. A company, with its great resources and its elastic character, can meet and recover from an adverse incident of this kind with scarcely a perceptible shock to its business. It is simply one of the items of loss which it is prepared to cover with a larger item of profit. There is also the additional assurance that all work that is done will be well done. The most careful observations and calculations are made of the amount and quality of included coal in any tract of land before it is purchased, and the best surveyors are employed to mark out the boundary lines of lands. The services of the most skillful mining engineers are retained, at salaries which no individual operator could afford to pay. Their forces are well organized, their mining operations are conducted with system and economy, and they are able to keep abreast of the age in all inventions and appliances that insure greater facility in mining and manufacturing, and greater safety to the workmen. Their employees are paid promptly at stated periods, and the possibility of a workman losing his wages by reason of neglect or failure on the part of his employer is reduced to a minimum. In general, it may be said that the control of the anthracite coal business by the great corporations, rather than by individual operators, is an undoubted benefit, not only to all the parties in direct interest, but to commerce and society as a whole. The only danger to be feared is from an abuse of the great powers to which these companies have attained; a danger which, thus far, has not seriously menaced the community. CHAPTER VII. THE WAY INTO THE MINES.