Shall a tariff be imposed upon them? That would be a law of
maximum. The State would then have to put itself in the place of
the exploiters; keep the accounts of their capital, interest, and
office expenses; regulate the wages of the miners, the salaries
of the engineers and directors, the price of the wood employed in
the extraction of the coal, the expenditure for material; and,
finally, determine the normal and legitimate rate of profit. All
this cannot be done by ministerial decree: a law is necessary.
Will the legislator dare, for the sake of a special industry, to
change the public law of the French, and put power in the place
of property? Then of two things one: either commerce in coals
will fall into the hands of the State, or else the State must
find some means of reconciling liberty and order in carrying on
the mining industry, in which case the socialists will ask that
what has been executed at one point be imitated at all points.
The coalition of the Loire mines has posited the social question
in terms which permit no more evasion.
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