The Government reserved for its own use all
anthracite coal, but sold bituminous coal in two-hundred-pound sacks for
a dollar, at the rate of five dollars a ton. The Government reserved for
its own use crude petroleum, but refined it as coal oil and sold it at
ten cents a gallon in dollar lots.
Pig iron and bar steel were sold by the Government at a price yielding
a profit of twenty per cent. over cost of production; lead and copper at
the same rate of profit, and all the gold and silver mined or brought
into Eurasia was coined and went into circulation. Every commodity
produced or manufactured by the Government in the above list was sold at
the same price, whether the Government warehouse where the goods were
sold was in the most populous city of Eurasia or at a lonely
fishing-station in the icy regions of the Arctic or in the torrid
deserts of the Tropics.
Every person buying a commodity in a Government store was required by
law to register his name in the Government account book opposite the
list of articles purchased, which was always open to the public for
inspection, so that any intelligent person could see who was addicted to
the use of intoxicating liquors, and the manager of the warehouse was
compelled by law on the complaint of a wife or mother to deny liquor to
the husband or son that was complained against and to publish the name
in the district newspaper of largest circulation as well as posting it
on the bulletin board on the front of the warehouse, and any person who
gave liquor directly or indirectly to the person prohibited was
sentenced, on conviction thereof, to six months' imprisonment at hard
labor.
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