The people's voice., 1958-12-19

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figure had risen TO 87.I%o; of all elec-
trified farms in the State, $50 were
served by co-ops.
ORGANIZATION OF THE
ELECTRIC INDUSTRY
The year 1882 is generally accepted
as the birth-year of central station
electric service in the United States,
and in that year four municipality
owned power plants went into opera
owned systems. So public power is
as old as private power in this coun-
try. Those first plants may have been
the result of Marxist scheming to i'm
pose a socialist state upon the nation,
but more likely they were the result
of some local people wanting to serve
a local need with local control. And
l might add here that publicly
energy resources go back lot farther
than that; the first public hydro-pow-
er plant in this country was con-
structed at Dorchester, Massachusetts
in 1923. 1t was a grist mill. and it
was followed by many similar public
power projects in New Hampshire,
Maryland and Pennsylvania-all be-
fore the year 1914. | mention this
only because these days you might
think h a t public ownership of
energy resources is all a socialist |
communist plot dreamed up by Karl
Marx. but these projects preceded |
Marx by over 200 yearsl
But the private companies grew
faster than the local public systems,
and as technical advances gave an
advantage to large-area operations,
the municipal systems, limited to their
own boundaries, were at a disadvan-
tage and many were taken over by
the private companies. Then came
the great holding company empires,
and by the end of the 1920's ten
great utility combines sold 7596 of
5he nations power; one group of
companies, controlled by the mis-
guided genius of Samuel insult. pro-
luced one-eighth of the nations total
power needs.
With the 1885 enactment of the
Holding Company Act came the grad
lal breakup and end of the great
,wnership-control combines. and at
he present time 81 private compa-
lies sell 70ao of the total electric
'ower of this country. Existing along
ide of these great companies are
ONE 1000 municipal systems, about Z
0 public power districts. six state !
wned systems, and nearly 1000 |
ural electric co-operatives: all told {
ne public systems serve some 25,-
100000 Americans. Including the :
mailer private systems. the total I
umber of private companies comes F
} about 450. Albert Lepawsky. in {
is excellent 1855 article in Reporter
commented: :
"The private utility companies. in =
leir refusal to recognize that public ;.
over is largely a phenomenon that u
rebates the reputedly Matchmaking n
ew Deal period, misconceive-to y
leir own detriment-the real charac- h
r of the American power set-up. n
''Not naturalization but rather To- n
llization has been the most persist Il
1T tendency of public power in the n
nited States. Municipal power, which q
as the only kind of public power "
listing at the beginning of the CEN n,
ry. amounted to about 1919 of our I,
tai power capacity in 1900. Today, Il
power. together with its ii
.wly associated forms of district u, ~
ID state power. still accounts for ~
l% of our total capacity" r.
In Montana, at the end of June ~
81, four private companies served ct
1922 customers and "a co-opera- ~
res served 40,724, or 1910 of the D, p,
lte's total of private customers. 1t
)ntana Power served 141 1928, which ~
1870 of the private total, or 66.79o ot
the State total. II,
HO WILL GET BENEFIT OF &c
TONIC INVESTMENT? m
7 think 7 naad not toll vo,, +baf tlC