The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-08-21

@S- LOT WdutlaB VO do every tn in g possible to produce more aluminium. Aluminium Company of America, hereinafter referred to as Alcoa for short, has been having its troubles with the government and vice versa for several years. Alcoa has been damned as monopoly, though the company maintains it has never done anything to prevent anyone else from going into the business If 1t coud raise the capital And if the truth be known, Alcoa heaved a big sigh of relief when Reynolds Metal did enter the field to take the heat of this monopoly charge. In spite of the fact that without a competitor Alcoa has brought the price of aluminium from about g 8 pound in 1900 and 70 cents 8 pound in 1919, to IT cents a pound in 1941, it's profits have if anything been consistently good, and that has brought upon it the finger of New Deal suspicion.
 SWORD STILL, HANGS
 In April, 1887, the antitrust divi- sion of the Justice Department filed suit against Alcoa, charging the company was a monopoly and party to agreements with foreign companies, under which the produc- tion of aluminium in the United States was restricted. That trial lasted from June, 1888, to August 15, 19340, and it produced so many million words of testimony that Judge Francis c. Caffey of New York hasn't been able to hand down his decision yet.
 Whatever difficulties Alcoa may have had with MT. Assistant Attor- ney General Thurman Arnold's divi- sion, and with MT. Power Czar Har- old Ickes, and regardless of the dirty cracks that have been taken at the company by the defense moguIs and various congressmen-which is an- other story altogether, with many misunderstanding and unfair ac- cuSationS-there has never been a day In recent years that Alcoa has not had occasion to rise up and call the Tennessee Valley Authority blessed. Those two have got along, as business and government should.
 The production of aluminium is largely matter of electric power. One of Alcoas big and rapidly growing bigger ingot and sheet mills Is at Alcoa, Tenn, near Knoxville, at the head of the IVA country. Long before IVA, even before Mus cle Shoals, Alcoa was in the upper Tennessee valley country, building dams of its own to generate power of its own to make aluminium.
 In October, 194O, Alcoa filed with the federal power commission a no- tice that 1t intended to build an- other dam in this area, a $50 million project it had been planning for years, and on which it had spent $3.6 million acquiring site and mak- ing surveys.
 A month later, FPC replied that for this project, it would be neces- sary for Alcoa to take out license, 8 federal government procedure not required On it's other dams. Taking out a license meant that Alcoa would have to agree to turn the pro- ject over to the government at the end Of 50 years. In other words. 1t meant that the company would have to write of this investment at the rate of $1 million year, which would be next to impossible for any one to do.
 LIGHT OUT OF STRIFE
 Alcoa countered with offers to OPM and IVA that 1t would take out the license if the government would assist in financing the project. or that it would sell the project to IVA. Or 1t would cooperate with the government in any other way that 1t could, just so 1t coud get the benefits of the 200, 900 kilowatts of energy necessary to operate its ex- banded Alcoa plant.
 Out of this inpasse came the pres ent deal between IVA and Alcoa. It IS 20 year renewable contract, too long and too complicated to go into In detail, but briefly Alcoa gets the power and IVA gets the Fontana
 
 damsite and the privilege of build the dam. Alcoa will be paid princi- pally in increased power but 1t will continue to operate the dams and the hydroelectric plants until l944 when Fontana is completed and the contract goes into effect. In the meantime, IVA will control stream now and power generation at all | Aicoa dams, though Alcoa retains title to five.
 The immediate benefits to the de- | fense effort are that by pooling the | IVA and Alcoa power, energy will | be made available to manufacture | a maximum additional 22 million pounds of aluminium annually, and bring thet otal potential capacity at Alcoa to more than 200 million