The producers news. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, 1928-03-30

intimate, unceasing control it may ex-
ercise over the daily life of every hu-
man being within the web of its wires.
1t is UNNECESSARILY the greatest in
dustrial fact of our time. If uncon-
trolled, it will be a plague without
previous example. If Effectively con-
trolled in the public interest, it can be
made incomparably the greatest ma
terial blessing in human history"
United States Senator George w.
Norris, who with his associates in the
United States Senate, has made an ex-
haustive study of this matter in con-
nection with his struggles with the
private power companies that are
seeking to get possession of the by
dro-electric resources at Muscle
Shoals, Boulder Canyon, the St. Law
renee River and elsewhere, has said:
81 have been dumbfounded and
amazed, and the country will be dumb
founded and amazed when it learns
that practically everything in the
electrical world is controlled either
directly or Indirectly by some part If
this gigantic trust. 1t controls from
one end of the country to the other
the generation and distribution of
electricity by water power and by
other means and the manufacture and
sale of electrical appliances, running
all the way from a little electric bulb
in the house lamp to the gigantic
generator that will handle without
trembling, from 10000 to 10000
horsepower. A gigantic trust that has
fastened its fangs upon the people OF
the United States from the Atlantic
to the Pacific and from the Great
Lakes to the Gulf"
Meanwhile, throughout the United
States in practically every state II
the Union, desperate battle is going
on in literally scores and hundreds OF
municipalities in which the cities are
struggling against the private power
companies to prevent the absorption
of their municipal plants.
From all of which it is clear that {
determined and nationwide effort il
being made by the private power In
terests of the country, and that RAPID
progress has already been made, to
wards monopolization. of the cleo
trio power industry of the nation.
fIV. COMPARATIVE RATES.
With the capital accounts of the pr
vate corporations heavily loaded a
explained above, high rates and charg
es for electric power and electric ser
vice are inevitable. Municipality own
ed and politically owned electric pro
jects applying as they do the princi
pies of amortization, the borrowing o
their capital at lower rates of intereS
and rendering service at cost are tn
only means by which the people ar
able to secure low rates.
Regulation" by which in most @
the states an effort is made to kee
rates down and to protect the peopl
from extortionate charges, has prove
itself utterly futile. In the first plaC
it is found that the enormous polite:
! influence and economic power of tn
electric power companies is so gres
that commissions are often under the
control. This was most strikingl- i
! Illustrated in the disclosures in come,
ton with the enormous campaign col
tributions that were made by Samu
, insult of the Commonwealth Ediso
J Co. of Chicago to secure the electio
of Frank Smith to the United State
! ! Senate, Mr.. Smith being at the tin
: the chairman of the Illinois Con
! merce Commission that was suppose
! to be protecting the people of Illino
and other middle west states from I'll
aggression of the insult corporation
! Innumerable other instances of sin
! liar nature have, of course, been di
= closed during recent years.
But what makes the dependence VI
v on this method of controlling rate
. utterly groundless and delusive, is Il
! fact that even if in rare instance
4 the public agencies contending fl
= lower rates are successful before Il
a Commissions, the companies prompt
+ appeal to the courts and the decision
3 of the commissions are override
# In MANY cases solemn contracts e.
tered into even by the greatest of OF
t Municipalities have thus been owe
e ridden and set aside by the court
. The recent decision of the Unite
) States Supreme Court which all 9th
- courts are now following to the effe
that Reproduction cost new" and r
D. turns Of seven to eight per cent up;
Y that cost must be the basis of fixiI
= rates bas destroyed the last vestij