principles of an operation of that kind, _i. e._ that it must reduce prices and not increase them. The anthracite coal combination was killed because prices were immediately put up.... “Q. Mr. McLeod has testified before this commission that it was his intention to effect such economies as should be reflected in lower prices. Do we understand that you criticise the policy in that it did not so reduce the prices? “A. He did not do it, no matter what his intention was.”[237] The situation was, however, as clearly understood by the public as by the managers themselves. Even before the combination had begun to carry out its policy, outcry was made, and as prices went up the agitation became intense. In New Jersey an act to legalize the combination which passed both houses was vetoed by Governor Abbot on the ground of the effect upon the price of anthracite coal;[238] and in June the Attorney-General applied for an injunction to dissolve the lease of the New Jersey Central to the Philadelphia & Reading, alleging that the tripartite agreement between these companies and the Philadelphia & Reading was illegal. The court granted a temporary injunction,[239] which it continued in August to a final hearing, with conditions to make it more effective. Prices did not go down, and in October Attorney-General Stockton of New Jersey again appeared before Chancellor McGill. He now charged the Philadelphia & Reading, the Central, and the Port Reading with having conspired to advance the price of coal in defiance of the order of the court, and asked for the appointment of a receiver to enforce the former decree, and to restrain the company from further using the New Jersey railroads for carrying any coal until the advanced price should have been reduced.[240] The officers denied the allegations, but the Chancellor sustained the Attorney-General on every point; and only the official announcement of the abrogation of the lease prevented the granting of the order.[241] The lease of the Lehigh Valley fared better. In a suit brought by M. H. Arnot, a stockholder in the Lehigh Valley, Judge Metzger of the Court of Common Pleas held that the Reading and Lehigh Valley were not parallel and competing lines in the sense contemplated by the law; and that mere incidental competition between branches or spurs of two systems would not prevent the consolidation of their main lines.[242] So much then of the original programme was allowed to stand.