CHAPTER XXXIII THE DOMAIN OF KING COAL Back in the days of President Buchanan the American Congress set aside large tracts of federal land, to be devoted forever after to the support of schools; and these lands have ever since been the favorite pasturage of Big Business. In state after state I found highly cultured members of old ruling families interested in education—and living upon fortunes made by the theft of school lands! In Maine and Wisconsin and Oregon these lands were stolen for the timber; in Minnesota for the iron ore; in Michigan for the copper; in Oklahoma and Texas for the oil; in Indiana and Illinois and Colorado for the coal. The story of the Colorado school lands is told in a little pamphlet, “The Looters,” by George A. Connell, Cedaredge, Colorado. The sections set aside were Numbers Sixteen and Thirty-six of all government townships; and according to data available, the schools of Colorado own about six billion tons of coal. Instead of working these mines for the benefit of the schools, the state of Colorado turns the land over to the coal companies for a royalty of ten cents per ton of coal mined! The schools have to have coal themselves, and they purchase it from these same coal companies. It costs the companies, to mine this coal and deliver it to the schools, $5.80 per ton, while the price which the schools pay for it is $10.50 per ton; the coal companies therefore make $4.70 per ton, and this after paying the ten cents royalty to the schools! In the year 1920 there were mined almost a million tons of coal from the state school lands; the schools got for this a net profit of a little over eighty-five thousand dollars, while the coal gang made a net profit of nearly four and a half million dollars. In other words, the coal companies made in one year from the coal more than the schools will make in fifty years. Under the present method of doing business, the schools and the people of Colorado will surrender to the coal corporations for the coal taken from the school lands a total net profit of twenty-seven billion dollars. Let us follow this coal money. Under the law a part of it has been turned into a “permanent school fund,” which now totals ten million dollars. And where does this money go? Why, to the banks, of course; and what do the banks pay for it? They pay three per cent interest; and at the same time the various school districts are borrowing money, and have to pay five and a half per cent on their bonds! The difference between these two items means a quarter of a million dollars, which the schools of Colorado are donating to the bankers every year! That pleases the bankers, and they use their control over the educators of Colorado to keep the people from knowing about the graft.