The producers news. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, 1930-02-07

Washington Hearings before
the Federal Trade Commission on
the astounding profits, stock-wat-
ering and other financial jugglery
of the power trust are about to
furnish the country new series
of sensations. For nearly a year
vast the accountants and other ex-
perts for the commission have
been looking into such books of
the power combine as were not
withheld from their inspection,
either through downright defiance
or through sleight-of-hand. The
fundamental question: chow much
am l being robbed of by the Pow
er Company is about to be an
swered for scores of millions of
Americans.
As a prelude to this phase of
the probe of the power monopoly,
members of the senate committee
on interstate commerce are read
ing the file of memoranda and
letters secured, under duress, from
the offices of the Federal Power
Commission, showing how Execu-
tive Secretary Bonner of that
commission has been trying to get
rid of the legal and accounting di-
visions of the power commission
staff, thereby covering up stock
watering schemes of the power
corporations to whom valuable
federal power sites are being
granted. A battle that has been
staged behind the locked doors of
a subcommittee of the house ap-
preparations committee is to be
brought into the open befare the
senate committee on interstate
commerce, and perhaps also be-
fore the Caraway committee on
lobby investigation. For there ex-
lists documentary evidence that the
power trust lobby in Washington
is highly expensive.
$50 IS
AS fitting farewell to the
chapter on the federal trade COM
missions investigation of the
propaganda against public owner
ship which has for years been
conducted by the power trust, Jud-
son King, director of the National
Popular Government League, has
| issued an open letter to George B,
Cortelyou, chairman of the Joint
committee of National Utility AS
sociations. King calls his state
ment "The Apologize of The Holy
Alliance"
He recalls that Bernard F. Wea-
dock, special counsel for Cortel-
you's organization, in his recent
attempted whitewash of the prop
uganda activities of the power
combine, named four organizations
including the Popular Government
League, as constituting an "unholy
alliance" against private owner
ship. The other three were the
Public Ownership League, the
League for Industrial Democracy
and the Peoples Legislative Ser
vice. If this is an unhoy alliance,
King infers, then the power COM
bine must be the holy alliance of
the gas, electric and street rail-
way corporations. And yet, with
this assumption of civic virtue, the
best they can do is to echo the
sentiments of Rob Roy McGregor
Sam insults propaganda agent:
MY idea in dealing with a public
ownership advocate would be not
to try logic or reason, but try 70
pin the Bolshevist idea on my op-
ponent."
Weadock undertook to prove
that advocates of public owner
ship are bolshevist. To Go this. he
went back to 1919 IN Cot a Letter.
head of the socialist national of
flee, on which appears the name of
Carl Thompson, now secretary of
the Public Ownership League. He
then had a letterhead of the Peo-
pies College of about the same
date, bearing the names of Thomn-
son and of Arthur LeSueur. the
latter signing himself "Yours
for the Revolution" That stereo-
typed socialist phrase of pre-war
days is today outlawed, but Wed
ock used it to prove that opno-
nents of the power trust in 199O
are conspiring for revolution
While Weadock charged that tba
appearance of certain names an tbo
directorates of a number of rad;-
cal or liberal organizations. sncb
as the Conference for Progressive
Political Action-which died N