The Caledonian sought other markets, but found itself handicapped by discriminating freight rates. Coal from the Colorado Fuel Company’s mines at Trinidad and at Gallup was being supplied at a price which just about equalled the freight rate alone from the point of production to destination. For example, the rate on lump coal from Gallup to Las Cruces was $5.65, and the coal was selling at the mine for $1.60 to $2.50 per ton; yet Gallup lump coal from the Colorado Fuel Company’s mines was being sold in Las Cruces for $5.65 a ton, exactly what the rival company, the Caledonian, would have to pay in freight. The Caledonian shipped coal to Silver City, N. M., paying the published rate, $5.90 a ton, while the Colorado Company was able to deliver Gallup coal at Silver City at $5.75 total for freight and cost of coal. This was in April, 1900. Later, the Caledonian shipped to Silver City at a rate of $5.75 per ton, just what the Colorado sold for, freight and all. As Gallup, Silver City, and Las Cruces are all in New Mexico, the Interstate Act does not apply to traffic between those points; but “Mr. Bowie (manager of the Caledonian) testified that he had made many shipments from Gallup to El Paso, Tex., upon which he paid the published rate, and that he found the same competitive conditions at El Paso and at points in Arizona and Mexico which existed at Silver City.”[182] The result was that the Caledonian and other mines were practically driven from the market, their business brought to a standstill, and the Colorado Fuel Company obtained a virtual monopoly of the trade that should have been divided with these companies. Before the Senate Committee, 1905, in answer to a question by Senator Kean about the so-called discriminations in the matter of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and the Santa Fe Railroad, Mr. Hearne of the Colorado Fuel Company said: “This matter has been brought about largely by sensational newspapers.... The coal produced by the Gallup people is inferior,[183] carrying not more than half the heating power of our high-grade bituminous. If the railroads have not extended to them the same rate they have extended to us, I presume it is because the people at Deming and El Paso, etc., do not want that fuel at any price.”[184] In other words, the Gallup coal was so poor that the people at Deming did not want it anyway, and so the railroad put a prohibitive rate on it to keep the people at Deming from buying it instead of the far superior Colorado coal which the people were determined to buy anyway.