The West Virginia operators appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission for an investigation, and an order suspending the rate was granted. Then John W. Boilleau, a big operator in Pennsylvania, demanded a reduction of 50 or 55 cents a ton from the Pittsburgh district, further complicating the situation. Early last year, the Interstate Commerce Commission handed down a decision reducing the rate from the Pittsburgh district 10 cents and held that the Chesapeake and Ohio and the Kanawha and Michigan rates should remain as they had been but that the Norfolk and Western rate might be increased. This decision resulted in increasing the differential in favor of Pittsburgh to 19 cents. With this handicap in freight rates, the operators on Paint and Cabin creeks say that it is impossible for them to pay the union scale and submit to union conditions and keep going. It is a fact that although the average price of coal in West Virginia for 1911 was a cent above the price in 1910, many coal companies failed. Some mines have been operated by receivers while others have been closed down on the ground that coal cannot be produced at the mouth of the mines and put on the cars at the price it brings in the market. Others are just about coming out even while some are making money. _Profits from Mine or Men?_ The strikers answer by charging that the losses and difficulties incident to competition are many of them paper losses and paper difficulties, that the mines would pay well under union conditions and rates of pay if the mines were not working on an inflated capitalization and were not endeavoring to earn money on a lot of watered stock. In one of the talks which I had with Neil Robinson, secretary of the West Virginia Mining Association, he went into the cost of production and told of the efforts of the Pittsburgh operators to shut the West Virginia coals out of the lake trade. He produced the calculations of G. W. Schleuderberg, general manager of the Pittsburgh Coal Company, which were given in the lake rate cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission, showing that the average cost of production in 52 mines, including general office expenses, depreciation, royalty, fuel, supplies, and labor, was 99.09 cents per ton of coal on cars. As against this, he showed a generalized statement, which he said was based on actual working conditions in the Kanawha splint coal mines indicating a cost of 99.11 cents on cars, a difference of two hundredths of a cent in favor of the Pittsburgh operators.