Question

Look at the cartoon titled “The Robber and His Victim.” What is causing the suffering of the woman in this cartoon? The coal trust cannot produce enough coal to heat the woman’s home. The coal trust is raising prices because it is not making enough of a profit. The coal trust is raising prices even though its members are already rich.

Answer 1

The cartoon illustrates the exploitation of consumers by the coal trust due to their manipulative pricing practices, which is historically tied to the coal trusts' pattern of accumulating wealth at the expense of local economies and workers.

Step-by-step explanation:

The suffering of the woman in the cartoon titled “The Robber and His Victim” is caused by the manipulation of coal prices by the coal trust, implied by the image to be due to the greed of its members who are already wealthy. This reflects historical practices where coal company executives and shareholders, often away from the local economy such as in Appalachia, accrued vast fortunes from coal mining, leading to economic challenges for the local population, like the lack of investment in socially productive infrastructure and economic diversification. The situation depicted in the cartoon is further exemplified by events like the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike in Pennsylvania, where despite miners achieving a wage raise, coal companies offset this by increasing the rates for supplies and housing that they controlled, thus continuing to maintain their high profit margins and influence over the workers.