The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1945-10-26
The FUTURE OF THE MOUNTAIN STATES

local plants producing for the local market In short
the numerous restrictive practices Of largescale en-
terprise have had unfortunate regional sfgniff-
often overlooked and too little understood
1t is not easy to cite specific examples of the
effects of absenteesm regional development.
Such facts not readily revealed; and it usually
takes official government investigation to bring
them to light The recent investigation of the con-
centraton of economic power by the TNEC has
yielded some highly significant evidence this
point
Among other things, the TNEC hearings on the
glass industry established the fact that the Hart
ford Empire Glass Company, patent holding COM
pany used it's control patents to eliminate
small independent milk bottle company established
in Santa Anna Texas. The Texas plant was started
by local businessmen and technicians and utilized
local natural resources 1t supplied a regional
market Nevertheless, Hartford engaged it in ex
pensiye litigation and eventually forced the indie
pendent to choose between bankruptcy or selling
out to a censee of the glass combine. 1t chose
the latter and the Santa Anna plant was razed to
the ground. The full story with discussion of its
economic implications, may be found in Walter Pres
colt Webb's Divided We Stand one of the few
good books on American regionalism.
4 MOTHER important business practice with re-
n gional implications is the basing-pont system
for fixing prices which is widely used by largescale
enterprise The nature of this system and how it
has worked to prevent the development of the re-
sources of the Mountain States is excellently illus
trated in an interchange of views between Senator
O'Mahoney of Wyoming chairman of the TNEC, and
the eminent Princeton economist, Frank w. Fetter
during of the lengthy TNEC hearings. Chair
OMahoney is speaking:
Well there is more exciting instance even
than that 1t is the case of gasoline. In Wyoming
we have the Salt Creek oil field and the Teapot
Dome, of which the whole country has heard. We
produce very high grade of natural petroleum.
crude petroleum, and we have refneries there-the
Midwest Oil Co., and the Standard Oil Co. of
Indiana, and the Sinclair REFINING Co. and yet
though the crude petroleum is pumped out of the
SOIL as 1t were, in Wyoming and refined in Wyo
ming and turned into the tanks Of the filling sta
ton in Wyoming the Wyoming citizen who rolls
up in his automobile to the Standard Oil filling
station Immediately outside of the Standard Oil
refinery pays price Tulsa plus, not the price OF
oil as refined in Wyoming from Wyoming crude,
but as though that oil had been refined in Okla
homa and transported by railroad all the way from
Tulsa to Casper; and there our people pay this
phantom freight So it is matter of great in
terest to the consumer as to whether or not that
is a system which should be permitted to exist
Professor Fetter These illustrations all
very pertinent to show how the basing-point prac-
tice invests geographical relations There is
thing rather offensive to the reason of men that
it should do that
Chairman: Well, have you given any consider
alton to this phase of the problem? If there were
basng-point system and no delivered-price sys-
tenn what would be the effect upon the develop
ment of industry in states which are far distant
from the centers of population!
Professor FetterIM My judgment is that it would
tend largely toward decentralization OF phys
icaI plants in industry, and would tend to decen
tralize the control of industry to a considerable
extent and make industries serve their own COM
munities and neghborhoods to greater extent
and make cousive price more difficult, if not inn
possible.
Absentee control therefore leads to the under
development of regional resources. Businessmen
ire denied opportunities for the full profitable de-
yeopment of local resources workers are denied
obs and consumers are forced to pay higher prices
o Eastern producers.
4 THIRD form of absenteeism cannot be ignored
IN This is the absenteeism of-or remote control
,y-the federal government Federal absenteeism
axes two forms. The first is the tendency, all too
common in Washington to enunciate and enforce
general policy without adapting 1t to regional
differences Joseph Kinsey Howard shows in mon
ana: High Wide, and Handsome" how the credit
olicies of the Federal Reserve Board played havoc
a Montana just after World War l. A more recent
xample is the notorious of the closing of the
old mines National considerations important in
yartime economy may well have justified this ac-
ion; nevertheless it's application was arbitrary and
oorly managed. Quite unnecessarily Washing
on Bureau" reused antagonism and created mis-
while seeming to maintain air of