The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1926-12-03
FREE CITIES

Those cities in Indiana which we're farsighted
enough to build their electric and water plants
about to reap the rewards of their enterprise.
For if the recent rulings of courts and the public
service commission anything they suggest that
the people which served by private corporations
are about to be forced to pay heavy tribute for
the war as would have been collected had the kaiser
won
THE theory of regulated utilities was that the
city and the utility partners with the public
commission standing arbiter between the two
to see that justice obtained by both
The use of public streets and property was con-
sidered as factor in the matter.
Under that theory it presumed that the
corporation would be permitted to take interest and
dividends at fair rate upon the actual dollars the
stockholders had invested. That presumption has
gone.
Instead of collecting actual cash investments,
the latest water decision suggests that the companies
can collect on the spot reproduction value of the
plants.
Under that ruling the companies which have built
up their plants from money taken from their Gus
toners will collect not only those dollars taken
from the people but on the increased price of ma
terals which go into these plants.
The war increased prices of everything which
are needed by the plants of electric and water
panies.
1t increased the wage rate that these men
who have a strange hold communities about
to levy their burden of tribute and profit to degree
undreamed of in the old days of corrupted city
councils and political mayors.
The rates in the future will have no relation
whatever the actual investments In these utility
plants which are privately owned.
The experts will figure out the present prices of
all the steel and copper and labor that would be
required to rebuild the plants, add few millions
for good will, and then either courts or the public
service commissions will proceed to fix rate which
viii return dividends upon this figure.
Could Germany have done worse had she ac-
tuay defeated the world and began her levies of
reparations and war costs she did to France more
than half century ago?
For that is what the whole thing has finally be-
come, tribute in favor of private public utility
concerns and it explains why fnanciers are very
anxious to purchase these private plants.
The few cities of the State which own their
water plants will escape that burden. They may
be expected to grow rapidly Manufacturers who
desire to escape unnecessary burdens will inevitably
seek them out
The fewer cities which own electric plants would
do well to stand guard against any temptations to
let them pass into private hands
For they the only cities in this saturnalia
of utility exploration.
The situation is made worse by the sinister sug
geston that the money furnished for the merging of
plants and the purchase of many of them is being
furnished by foreign government whose fnanciers
and diplomats very eager to regain commercial
supremacy.
1t is rather sardonic tragedy that the nation
which went into the war without desire for loot and
whose people fought unselfshly should face such a
shackling of energies through cities held hostage
these utility interests