Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-10-29
ONE CASE TO APPEAL

ment that one of the reasons the
general assembly gave the Public
Service Commission authority to
regulate utilities was to prevent
burdens upon the public either in
the form of unjust rates or waste
fui competition, it would seem that
the decision of the commission that
mergers of competing telephone
companies can not be approved un-
der the constitution adopted A years
ago, is one which should be reviewed
by the superior court. 1t is a case
wherein there is a difference of
opinion among the commissioners
themselves and about which law
yers disagree. It presents the ques-
tion whether situations arising out
of conditions unforeseen by the
trainers of the organic law of Penn
sylvania are to be regulated by i'm
pIication or whether public interest
shall govern.
The commissioner in the minority
in the case writes that the people in
the territory covered by the two
telephone companies are confronted
with twice the pay and half the
service" proposition, which the ma
jority report of the commission
candidly admits when it declares
"the operation of the competing
lines of telephone in this particular
district is uneconomic and wasteful." ="
The majority holds that the consti-
tuition and the acts passed in pur-
suance thereof prohibit consolida-
ton of competing telegraph lines
and that courts and legislatures
have classified the telephone with
the telegraph. The minority holds
that things coming into existence
since 1873 and forming so vital a
part of daily life as the telephone
should not be arbitrarily placed un-
der the same restrictions as the
telegraph. The telegraph was the
chief mechanical means of long dis
tance transmission of information
known when the constitution was
adopted and for convenience in in
corporation of companies for tele-
phone development they were classi-
fed with the telegraph companies by
exercise of "latitudinous power"
No one can foretell' when tbs
people of Pennsylvania, who are
rather weary of continual attempts
to amend the constitution. will or
dain a new constitutional conven-
ton and no one can foresee what
new utilities may spring from the
minds of inventors, especially in an
hour like the present, when the
genius of America has been sum-
moned to devise new means of ma
tional defense. Ideas conceived in
the crisis of war may be applied in
astonishing ways to the arts of
peace, just as the Prussian mind
perverted the achievements of civil
ization to the prosecution of war
in it's most diabolic form. The pro-
gress of science in annihilation of
distance has been so marvellous
that within a decade we may be
employing hourly things as little
thought of now as was competition
in wireless telephoning or aero
plane express service in the day of
the Columbian Exposition. The
habits of economy that the most ex-
travagant people on earth will have
ingrained in them when this war is
ended will be such as to refuse. 10
stand for what is patiently bad
business" in industry, government
or utilities.
: Quite regardless of whether two
telephone companies, two cold stor-
age companies or two sewage dis
posal companies are involved, this
case would seem to present a ques-
ton which should be taken before
the appellate court.