A WORD MORE AS TO THE COAL MINES. Bv H. W. Chaplin. THE writer has been asked by the editor of The Green Bag to contribute a brief article to the discussion that has arisen, as to the rights of the public in connection with industries of vital public importance, referring particularly to the coal strike of the past summer. The subject has lost most of its immediate interest for the gen eral reader through the adoption of the arbi tration plan and the resumption of mining. But the question of legal rights and remedies which is involved, is one of such importance, and suggests such far reaching possibilities for the future, that the removal of any occa sion for the immediate assertion of the public rights through the courts, may not greatly diminish the interest of lawyers in the legal question. The writer's views on the matter have already been stated at some length in a pamphlet recently published, from which copious extracts were made in a review in the October number of this magazine. It is hardly worth while to rehearse here the con siderations which were there presented, and the present article will be confined to certain questions which have been raised by critics, in discussing the views presented in the pamphlet. Mr. Bruce Wyman, in an article in the last number of The Grebn Bag, took issue with the writer on the fundamental question whether or not the business of mining an thracite coal, as now conducted in Pennsyl vania, is a public calling in the legal sense. But a careful reading of Mr. Wyman 's article, aside from the bare conclusion reached, seems to disclose very little difference of opinion. Mr. Wyman points out the rather obvious fact that some employments are, and some are not, held by the courts to be subject to the law
of public callings; and he suggests the fur ther fact that many employments which have not been and are not likely to be brought within that class, are nevertheless employ ments of the utmost importance to the pub lic. The grocery store furnishes an excellent example. Mr. Wyman therefore argues that the element of importance to the public is not alone sufficient to determine the classifi cation of a particular business. If there was anything in the pamphlet which Mr. Wyman was reviewing, which was taken to make that element alone the test, the writer finds some difficulty in discovering whence a careful reader could have derived such an impres sion. Indeed, it appears evident that the critic has entirely misconceived much of the argu ment of the pamphlet. He dismisses as not pertinent to the issue, all that was said in illustration of the many ways in which, entirely aside from the law of public callings, the enjoyment and use of private property are limited and regulated for the public good; and thus attempts to exclude from the discussion every precedent and doctrine not explicitly relating to public callings in the technical sense. Undoubtedly the lead ing proposition asserted in the pamphlet was the proposition that anthracite coal min ing in Pennsylvania under present conditions is a public calling; but one is none too likely to reach a sound conclusion upon a funda mental question of law, who, in the discus sion of particular doctrines, neglects all that may be learned as to their spirit and the ex tent of their proper application, by an exami nation of legal analogies, and an attempt to determine both the attitude in which the law approaches the entire subject, and the general
