If the profits, which it clearly appears are taken out of the public by the defendant
and its subsidiary companies, are possible now, what will be the result if
this enormous and steadily growing aggregation of wealth were permitted to
charge its own rates, as it claims it has a right to do, without supervision by governmental
authority, and has full power to discriminate against those municipal
and industrial plants and factories which it may desire to crush out and buy?
There must be considered, too, that with the constantly decreasing competition
from the coal supply, which must be conserved to prevent exhaustion, and
which is so frequently interrupted by strikes, the power the defendant claims
of unrestricted rates and of absolute right to discriminate between purchasers
would make it a despotism beyond a parallel in history.