With a view to remedying certain of the major evils that interfered with the service of the coal industry to the nation, Senators Calder, Frelinghuysen, and Kenyon introduced bills and conducted public hearings. They had concluded that what Congress and the public needed to know if they were to legislate fairly and intelligently was the full truth about "ownership, production, distribution, stocks, investments, costs, sales, margins, and profits in the coal industry and trade." But in 1921, the organized operators of the country, feeling that they could conduct the industry most successfully without governmental supervision or the scrutiny of informed public opinion, opposed all attempts at legislation designed to accomplish the precise ends which in 1914 the operators of Illinois and Indiana regarded as essential to the best interests of all concerned. In reviewing the history of the efforts which he and his colleagues had made to get at and publish the facts, Senator Frelinghuysen reported to Congress that "though we made every concession that we felt justified in making, we find, after two years of conference and the price of coal still high, that practically all of these operators, organized and unorganized, are bitterly opposing the principle of these two bills--first, the season freight rate bill, and second the bill 'to aid in stabilizing the coal industry'--and have organized an elaborate propaganda with a view to bringing about their defeat.... The National Coal Association has been the chief defender of the coal trade since I became interested in the subject.... For a time I looked upon the men of this organization as fair and reasonable and I sympathized with their demand that the coal trade be permitted to work out its own salvation without Government interference, provided full statistics were obtainable regarding cost of production, transportation, and delivery to the humblest consumer. For a time they seemed willing to concede this. But I am finally and reluctantly convinced that my hope in that direction has always been a delusion." After devoting two years to a vain attempt to get at "full statistics," Senator Frelinghuysen lost patience with the operators. But he forgot that many of their leaders still sincerely adhere to Mr. Baer's faith that God has entrusted the interests of the community to the owners of property and that congressional interference, even when limited to the ascertainment of statistics, is subversive not only of the status of the owners as trustees of the nation's fuel resources, but also of the public interest itself. This conviction of the operators is a fact that must be weighed without impatience like any fact in chemistry or physics.