Court Opinion

ID: 9809740
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:24:05.431298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:05:45.052985
License: Public Domain

*27Clark, C. J.
By demurring ore tenus, “the defendant admits all of the allegations made by the plaintiffs, and if any part of the complaint presents facts sufficient for that purpose or can be gathered from it, under a liberal construction of its terms, the pleading will be sustained.” Hendrix v. R. R., 162 N. C., 15.
“Every reasonable intendment and presumption must be made in favor of the pleader. It must be fatally defective before it will be rejected as insufficient.” Brewer v. Wynne, 154 N. C., 471.
In Garrett v. Trotter, 65 N. C., 432, Pearson, C. J., says: “A defect in pleading is aided if the adverse party plead over to, or answer the defective pleading in such a manner that an omission or an informality therein is expressly or impliedly supplied or rendered formal or intelligible. . . . This principle .commends itself so strongly by its good sense that it must be taken to underlie every system of procedure professing to aim at the furtherance of justice, and to put controversies upon their merits, and not allow actions to go off upon subtleties and refinements.”
The facts in this case admitted, or not denied, are that:
1. The defendant Southern Power Company is a public-service corporation. As such, it is subject to the laws of North Carolina governing public utilities companies.
2. As such public-service company, and by virtue thereof only, it enjoys and exercises the right and power of eminent domain, and as a consequence must discharge its duties subject to public regulation of its rates and conduct, and without discrimination in the facilities it extends, and the rates it charges, wider the same or substantially similar conditions.
3. The defendant has a monopoly of the hydroelectric power supply and the markets therefor in the territory through which its lines extend.
4. It has been engaged more than ten years past in selling hydroelectric current to this plaintiff, to be resold at retail to citizens at Salisbury, Spencer, and East Spencer, High Point and Greensboro, and also to the Southern Public Utilities Company (which the defendant substantially owns and controls), to be resold at Charlotte, "Winston-Salem, and Eeidsville, and other points, and is selling its current to the municipalities of Lincolnton, Shelby, and Newton, to be resold to their respective citizens, and its business has become affected with a public use, and is for tbat reason also subject to public regulation of its rates and conduct, which rates cannot be discriminatory under like conditions or at the same points.
5. In 1914 it filed a statement with tbe Corporation Commission, denying tbat tbe commission bad any authority to require it to file a schedule of its rates or to promulgate rules and regulations governing *28it, and expressly asserted this power to be in itself by saying; "Each case must be treated on its peculiar circumstances, and the rates are subject to the reasonable rules and regulations of the company,” thereby asserting its exemption from control of the law and its superiority to public regulation of its conduct or rates.
6. Exercising the power, thus boldly declared that it possesses free from any control by the public, it declines to sell power and current to any consumer for a less period than 5 years, and then only under the terms which it sees fit to offer under its assertion of absolute sovereignty and freedom from control by law.
7. If a purchaser declines to accept any contract it offers, it charges such other higher rate as it may deem proper, for instance, it is charging the plaintiff 18.8 mills for a current which costs it 4 mills, and which it is selling to others at Salisbury at 11 mills, and which it is selling to the municipality at that point at 10 mills per Kw. H.
8. The defendant has entered into a long-term contract, extending to 1944, to furnish power to the Southern Public Utilities Company (which it substantially owns) at a less rate than it will sell to the plaintiff or any municipality in this State.
9. In 1917 it entered into a contract with its subsidiary (or alias), the Southern Public Utilities Company, to resell power at Reidsville at a figure so low that said utilities company is reselling power at a lower rate than the defendant power company will sell at wholesale to the plaintiffs.
10. The defendant company sells current only when reduced to not below 2,300 volts, and is not engaged in the retail power business. It induced the plaintiffs to discontinue their steam plant and purchase current from it on the basis of 11 mills, knowing that the current and power was to be resold in Salisbury and other towns in which plaintiffs do business.
11. It offers to sell the plaintiff current and power to be retailed by it, if the defendant is allowed without regal restraint to fix the price and terms of the contract.
12. It pleads want of authority in the courts to compel it to furnish power to the plaintiff upon the ground that it must not be restricted from discrimination in its rates.
13. The defendant Southern Power Company purchases its current at 4 mills per Kw. H. under a long-term contract, but declines to allow the plaintiff to share in the water rate of 4 mills, and requires the plaintiffs to pay it 18.8 mills, or more than 470 per cent profit.
14. The defendant Southern Power Company seeks to justify its increase in rates by alleging that it is necessary to do so to earn any dividend on the capital invested. The bonds, common and preferred *29stock outstanding against this property exceeds $28,000,000, and over half the stock it has issued, the plaintiff avers that it can show, was not issued for expense incurred and represents only inflation.
15. The large increase in price for power of nearly 100 per cent charged the plaintiff, i. e., from 11 mills to 18.8 mills, has been applied only to the plaintiff. But in all cases it charges municipalities and other public utilities companies more for current and power than it charges its own subsidiary, the Southern Public Utilities Company, thereby pressing most heavily upon those least able to resist extortion, and who are for that reason most entitled.to the aid of the State for its protection.
16. The properties and plant of the defendant Southern Power Company, and its affiliated and subsidiary companies, were acquired and the plants completed substantially prior to the declaration of war, and it is entitled to no increased charge by reason of the advance in coal and labor since that date by reason of the fact that the cost of its operations is based upon the employment of a very small number of employees, and it is entitled to earnings almost solely upon the capital invested in properties and plants which have not been largely increased.
17. Its current is received by it under a long-term contract, under which it has subcontracted to sell to its subsidiary, the Southern Public Utilities Company, until 1944, at a less rate than it charges any other consumer. It only pays 4 mills for this current, and the former rate of 11 mills (i. 11/10 cents) to the plaintiff would seem more than sufficient for proper remuneration, being a profit of 275 per cent.
18. The public policy of the State and of the National Government, which has been expressed not only in its Constitution from the beginning, and has been recently more fully expressed in statutes against trusts, and by decisions in the U. S. Supreme Court, forbids that this enormous aggregation of capital, charging exorbitant rates as appears by its own admissions in this record, should have, as it explicitly claims, the unrestricted right to fix its own rates and to discriminate between its customers, as if it were a private individual dealing in a competitive market.
It is of the highest importance that these claims of the defendant Southern Power Company to discriminate in the rates charged by it to purchasers under like conditions should be clearly denied by the courts. If the defendant is thus permitted to charge cotton mills in which the owners of the defendant are interested the rate of 11 mills, while it charges the plaintiffs and others mills and industries in which it is not interested 18.8 mills, or a higher rate than it does others in like conditiou, it follows that in a comparatively brief time the defendant will have the power to destroy, and thereby acquire the ownership of all the other cotton mills and industrial plants in the State, and thus create a cotton mill monopoly wherever its lines extend, for by reason of the approaching exhaustion *30of tbe coal mines and the interruption of their operations there can soon be left available for large industrial plants no other power than the monopolized water power of the State.
The counsel for the defendant, upon the argument, stressed the contention that both plaintiff and defendant being public-service companies, and authorized by their respective charters to generate, and sell to the public, electric current that plaintiff could not evade this duty and require the defendant to furnish it current and power to resell. This argument is plausible, but we think unsound and untenable upon the admitted facts in this record. The defendant’s charter expressly authorizes it to sell current and power to other public utility companies for the purpose of resale. This charter power is not mandatory. Still, when the defendant elected to exercise this power, and ten years ago made a contract with the plaintiff, Salisbury & Spencer Railroad Company, to furnish current and power to be resold to the people of that city for the next succeeding ten years, and induced it to scrap its steam plant and to rely solely upon the defendant for its hydroelectric power, and thereafter made similar contracts with "the other plaintiff, the North Carolina Public Service Company, for ten years for current to be resold in Greensboro and High Point, and contracted with its own subsidiary, the Southern Public Utilities Company, to furnish it current and power up to 1944, to be resold, it dedicated its property to this particular class of public use, and cannot discriminate in charge or service between the several members of this class, for this would be a license to discriminate among cotton mills as a class, furniture factories, etc.
Wyman on Public Service Corporations, sec. 10, says: “Those who conduct private enterprises may use many schemes, but those who offer public employment must not adopt any business policies which are anyways inconsistent with impartiality in discharge of their public duties.”
It is well settled that the common-law obligation of equal and undiscriminating service clearly requires that the same charges shall be made to all consumers for the rendering of similar service. The Supreme Court of the United States, in Western Union Tel. Co. v. Call Pub. Co., 181 U. S., 92, very fully discusses this doctrine, and in the course of its opinion says: “They are endowed by the State with some of its sovereign powers, such as the right of eminent domain, and so endowed by reason of the public service rendered. As a consequence of this, all individuals have equal rights, both with respect to services and charges. . . . To affirm that a condition of things exist under which common carriers anywhere in the country engaged in any form of transportation are relieved from the burdens of these obligations, is a proposition which, to say the least, is startling.”
*31This obligation cannot be evaded, even though the purchaser of the current may be to some extent a competitor: This question is very fully discussed in Postal Cable Telegraph Company v. Cumberland T. & T. Company, 177 Fed., 726, et seq. The Court there says: “The portion' of the sovereign power with which telephone companies are as common 1 carriers endowed is likewise given them for the purpose of serving not merely part of the public, but all of the public; and all persons compos-' ing the public, even though they be, in a sense, competitors, are entitled ] to use their privileges upon equal terms, and ‘have equal rights both ini respect to service and charge.’ ”
The Corporation Commission of California, in an opinion rendered 23 July, 1917, in the matter of the application of the Great Western Power Company, discussing the right of the power company to arbitrarily select its consumers, states “that the duties and obligations which it has undertaken do not contemplate the right on its part to select the consumers it will serve”; and further says: “It is clearly the duty of! the public utility, situated as is the petitioner, to supply every reasonable] demand for service at nondiscriminatory rates, and under just terms and conditions. Nor can this duty be avoided, modified, or abridged in any manner whatsoever, either by contract between the utility and any private interest or by the maintenance of unsuitable facilities. . . . In case of a temporary insufficient supply of electric energy to meet all reasonable demands in the territory which petitioner has elected to serve, the available supply will, of course, be prorated upon an equitable basis, consideration being given to the necessities of the public, irrespective whether or not these necessities arise directly or through the medium of another utility.”
The foregoing is a just and reasonable statement of the common-law obligations resting upon public utility companies such as the defendant.
It appears from the investigation made by Congress into the water power of the country that 94 per cent of the water power of this State has been acquired by corporations which are either already owned or can soon be acquired by the Southern Power Company, or made subsidiary by the use of the same method of underbidding, and afterwards acquiring competitive plants, by which means the American Tobacco Company and the Standard Oil Company acquired the monopolies which since have been to some extent abated by the courts in pursuance of the action of Congress taken at the demand of a sound and overwhelming public opinion.
The methods being used by the defendant company by discrimination in the prices to consumers is identical with that which built up the Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company, and other *32great trusts which came under the ban of Congressional enactment, and which were condemned by decisions of the U. S. Supreme Court and by decrees of dissolution.
The control of the defendant corporation is by the same men who organized the American Tobacco Company, which was ordered dissolved in the case of U. S. v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U. S., 106 (October Term, 1910), in which the U. S. Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice White, held that J. B. Duke, the president of the Tobacco trust, and the president of this defendant company, was individually responsible for the violations of law committed by that concern. The Court, in that opinion, speaking of the unlawful practices which were identical in all points with those in this case, as charged in the complaint, and admitted by the demurrer, recited the many facts which it held proven (p. 182) “by the ever present manifestation which is exhibited of a conscious wrong doing by the form in which the various transactions were embodied from the beginning, ever changing, but ever in substance the same. Now the organization of a new company, now the control exerted by the taking of stock in one or another, or in several, so as to obscure the result actually attained, nevertheless uniform in their manifestations of the purpose to restrain others, and to monopolize and retain power in the bands of the few, who it would seem, from the beginning contemplated the mastery of the trade, which practically followed. By the gradual absorption of control over all the elements essential to the successful manufacture of tobacco products, and placing such control in the bands of seemingly independent corporations, serving as perpetual barriers to the entry of others in the tobacco trade.”
The Court further says (p. 181) of that combination and monopoly: “The history of the combination is replete with the doing of acts which it was the obvious purpose of the statute to forbid, so demonstrative of the existence from the beginning, of a purpose to acquire dominion and control of the tobacco trade, not by the mere exertion of the ordinary right to contract and to trade, but by methods devised in order to monopolize the trade by driving competitors out of business, which were ruthlessly carried out, upon the assumption that to work upon the fears or play upon the cupidity of competitors would make success possible.” The above paragraphs were repeated and concurred in by Judge Harlan (pp. 189, 190) as “undoubtedly” a just “characterization of this monster combination.” No judge dissented.
The story of high finance and monopoly record, as shown in that case, is displayed along the same lines in this present enterprise. In 1905 the same J. B. Duke and bis associates, as disclosed by the undisputed facts in this record, incorporated the defendant company in New Jersey, in which State the American Tobacco Company and its subsidiary com*33panies, or aliases, were chartered. The defendant company acquired water rights and built power plants on the Catawba and Broad rivers in South Carolina. Afterwards the same Duke and associates organized the Great Falls Power Company, also chartered in New Jersey in 1907, and as owners of the Southern Power Company, on 1 March, 1910, sold to themselves, as owners .of the Great Falls Power Company, the three hydroelectric plants which had been erected by the Southern Power Company. To take care of the cost of developing this property, the owners and promoters of the defendant power company placed a mortgage upon the same in the sum of $10,000,000, which it is alleged is substantially the cost of the property purchased and developed. In addition, they issued to themselves $6,000,000 of 7 per cent cumulative preferred stock and $4,000,000 of common stock, and substantially the same interest and men organizing the Great Falls Power Company as the holding company for the hydroelectric generating properties, took over its part of the defendant company, and immediately executed back a contract which provides that the Great Falls Power Company shall furnish its hydroelectric current to the defendant for a long term of years at the rate of 4 mills per Kw. H. The defendant company and its promoters, acting for themselves and for the Great Falls Power Company, caused the latter company to issue $5,768,800 of 7 per cent cumulative preferred stock, and also $5,768,800 common stock, which said stock was substantially all turned over to the defendant company and its promoters, who now own the. same. Thereafter the same J. B. Duke and associates organized a subsidiary retail company, known as the Southern Public Utilities Company, which was principally owned by himself and immediate family and controlled by him. The company acquired a monopoly of the retail electric power business in Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Reidsville, the latter under methods discussed in Allen v. Reidsville, 178 N. C., 513, 527-537. Thus these two corporations, under the same control, monopolized the wholesale supply of current and the retail distribution of same wherever a subsidiary company could get control of the municipal franchises. It is unnecessary to trace the transactions of this company in all its manifestations, but enough has appeared to show that the existence and operation of a water power monopoly with power to discriminate in its rates would be a menace which neither the courts nor the public can disregard.
The object of this action is not to declare or fix rates; nor is it to have the rates declared exorbitant, however clearly this may appear, but to prevent that discrimination between the purchasers of its power, which is a method by which the Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company, and all other trusts have crushed opposition and enlarged their power and increased their accumulations to a point which made *34them a menace to government by the people, and caused their dissolution by judicial decree. Griffin v. Water Co., 122 N. C., 209.
The argument is presented that even though an unlawful discrimination in rates exists, still the courts are without power or procedure to correct the evil. Such judicial impotency does not exist in North Carolina. This Court, in the R. R. Discrimination cases, 136 N. C., 479, and 141 N. C., 171, established the rule and procedure by which such question should be determined. Justice Connor, speaking for the Court in the latter case, says: “However the courts construe statutes making penal or criminal a violation of the equality of right, when we come to deal with the question, in the enforcement of the civil right of the citizen, we must construe the law so that the right is secured and the remedy for its infringement given. This is the keynote of the decisions both in England and this country.”
It will not be difficult for the Court, upon the bearing, to determine the lowest rate charged by the defendant for current and power furnished cotton mills, factories, municipalities, or other public-service companies, under the same or substantially similar conditions. The lowest rate thus established will automatically become the proper rate to be charged the plaintiffs for such service. Otherwise, the defendant will still be unlawfully discriminating against the plaintiffs.
The remedy sought here by a mandamus to compel the defendant company to concede to the plaintiffs the same rates that it grants to others, especially to its subsidiary companies, is the proper one, as stated by Allen, J., in Walls v. Strickland, 174 N. C., 299, which was to compel a telephone public-service company to discharge its duties impartially and without discrimination. The defendant in that case pursued exactly the same course as in this in regard to the jurisdiction of the Court, and “excepted and appealed upon the ground that telephone companies being subject to the control and regulation of the Corporation Commission, the courts have no jurisdiction of the action.”
In that case Judge Allen said: “The error in the position of the defendants is in failing to distinguish between the regulation and control of telephone companies, which, as to individuals and corporations, are committed by statute to the Corporation Commission (Rev., 1096; ch. 966, Laws 1907), whether exclusively so or not we need not say, and the refusal to perform a duty to the plaintiff, arising upon facts that are established. If the duty exists upon the facts found, there is nothing for the Corporation Commission to bear and investigate, and it only remains for the courts to compel performance of the duty.
“The question was considered in Godwin v. Tel. Co., 136 N. C., 259, prior to the amendment of 1907, it is true, but when, as said in the opinion, telephone companies were placed by the Corporation Commis*35sion Act on the same footing as to public uses as railroads, it was then held that telephone companies, serving the public, must discharge their duties impartially and without discrimination, and that the writ of mandamus, issued by the courts, was the proper remedy to enforce the performance of the duty. . . . This case was approved in Tel. Co. v. Tel. Co., 159 N. C., 16, decided after the amendments of 1907, and the jurisdiction to enforce performance of a duty by mandamus was recognized and exercised.”
In Tel. Co. v. Tel. Co., 159 N. C., 11, Hoke, J., said: “In regard to the form of remedy available where, as in this State, the same Court is vested with both legal and equitable jurisdiction, there is very little difference in its practical results between proceedings in mandamus and by mandatory injunction, the former being permissible when the action is to enforce performance of duties existent for the benefit of the public, and the latter being confined usually to causes of an equitable nature and in the enforcement of rights which solely concern individuals. High on Injunctions (4 ed.), sec. 2. Owing to the public interests involved in controversies of this character, it is generally held that mandamus may be properly resorted to. Mayhan v. Telephone Co., 132 Md., 242; Yancy v. Telephone Co., 81 Ark., 486; Godwin v. Tel. Co., 136 N. C., 258.”
The defendant asserts that it has a right to select customers to whom it will sell current and power, and to discriminate at will as to its prices. To this it may be said:
First. The General Assembly declares “all water power, hydroelectric power, and water companies now doing business in this State, whether organized under general or private laws of this State, or under the laws of any other State or county, shall be deemed to be public-service companies and subject to the laws of this State regulating public-service corporations.” The enactment of this statute was procured by foreign water power companies, for by Rev., 3060, and 2575, this State, like most, if not all others, denied the right of eminent domain except to companies chartered by this State.
Second. It enjoys the privileges and has accepted the benefits of the right of eminent domain, and hence is subject to public control. Griffin v. Water Co., 122 N. C., 206.
Third. It has expressly devoted its property to the public use over a period of ten years by connecting its lines with and furnishing electric current and power to other public-service corporations, as well as to the plaintiff, and to municipalities, with a knowledge that the current so purchased was being resold for the benefit of the inhabitants of the various cities, and its property has therefore become affected with a public use.
*36Fourth. It enjoys a monopoly of the hydroelectric business at Salisbury and in Western North Carolina.
Suppose a railroad corporation should have the power at will to charge one set of merchants at a given town a higher freight rate than it charges others under like conditions, how long would it be before those charged the higher price would be forced out of business? Yet a railroad is by no means as much a monopoly as the Southern Power Company, for in many towns there are competing railroads, but in this case it appears by the averments of the complaint, which are admitted by the demurrer, that throughout the territory where the defendant operates there is no other hydroelectric power,- and that plants operated by coal cannot compete in prices.
At the same point and under like conditions the defendant must make the same charges to all alike. It is only on these terms that a monopoly is endurable at all. If it has not enough power at any one point for all applicants, it is its duty to give “miller’s turn,” that is, to furnish water power for heat and lighting in the order in which the applicants apply for contracts and at the same price to all whom it furnishes.
That hydroelectric companies must furnish at the same price all parties without discrimination, under like conditions, is held in Water Works Co. v. Brown, an Alabama case which is reported 1915 D (L. R. A), 1086, with copious notes, all of which are to that purport.
Mandamus, is the proper and only remedy to compel the defendant to continue to furnish power and light to the plaintiff company on the same terms that it is furnishing others under like condition.
The real point in this case is not whether the rates charged any one are exorbitant, nor is it sought to have the rates fixed by the courts. The sole object of this proceeding is to forbid discrimination between purchasers in like conditions.
But as much was said in the argument and in the pleadings as to the charges, it may be well to translate into every-day language the rates set out in the pleadings and in the arguments:
One thousand watts is a kilowatt, and 1,000 watts an hour is a kilowatt hour, or Kw. II. The rate of 4 mills per Kw. H. (at which the Southern Power Company obtains its current from its subsidiary company, the Great Falls Company) amounts to nearly 3 mills per horse power per hour. A horse power is 746 watts, or roughly, three-fourths of a kilowatt.
The rate of 11 mills per Kw. H., at which the defendant had been reselling its power to the plaintiff, and is still selling it to many other companies, is 8.21 per h. p. per hour, a profit of about 275 per cent.
The rate of 1.88 cents, at which the defendant now offers to sell its *37power and current to the plaintiff is 1.40 cents per b. p. per hour, or a profit of nearly 470 per cent.
The rate of 15 cents (i. e., 150 mills) per Kw. H., at which some local companies resell to the individual consumer, amounts to 11 1/5 cents per b. p. per hour, which is a profit by the latter of 800 per cent, as alleged in defendant’s answer.
As the Great Falls Company must make a profit to pay its interest and dividends when it sells to the Southern Power Company at 4 mills, it must follow that there is an almost incalculable profit taken out of the public between the actual cost of the power produced by the Great Falls Company and sold to the Southern Power Company with a profit, at the figure of 4 mills, and the 11 1/5 cents, or 112 mills per h. p. per hour charged consumers of the lights in the towns when they pay 15 cents per kilowatt per hour, or 11 1/5 cents per b. p. per hour. The current when used by the consumer at bis borne in the city will cost approximately 37½ times the original 4 mills per kilowatt (which is 3 mills per b. p. hour) paid by the defendant Southern Power Company to the Great Falls Company, its subsidiary company, and the Great Falls Company out of the price which it charges the Southern Power Company has then already made a big profit, out of which to pay interest and dividends on its heavily watered stock and bonds.
The great profit made by the initial company in generating power is nowhere better proven, aside from the allegations in the complaint and answer in this case, than in the recent report on the water power bearing in Congress, which shows that in Canada, under the reforms instituted by government in restricting the profits, water power and lights are now furnished at 1% cents per Kw. H. (kilowatt hour) to consumers, instead of 15 cents, which is the rate many consumers in this State are now paying for lights and power from the local light and power company. The answer of the defendant in this case claims that the plaintiff and other similar companies are reselling to their patrons at 800 per cent profit over the price they are paying to the defendant. It is but fair to say, however, that the local companies have very heavy expenses necessarily, and whether the 800 per cent advance on the prices they are paying is unreasonable or not does not arise in this case. The allegation is not proven and is not admitted by demurrer or otherwise. But if true, the remedy is by application to the Corporation Commission to fix reasonable rates. Extortion by the plaintiff, if shown, will not justify discrimination by the defendant.
As the defendant claims that it must advance its price to the plaintiff beyond the 11 mills which it has been charging to the plaintiff, and which is 275 per cent over what it pays the Great Falls Company, and claims therefore that it must increase its charge to the plaintiff to 18.8 mills *38(which is 470 per cent of the cost to it of the power), it is proper to observe that the operations of the defendant Southern Power Company does not call relatively for so large a number of men or other expenses, and that at the charge to the plaintiff of 1.1 (i. e., 11 mills) it is shown that it has paid large dividends on its greatly inflated stock and bonds..
If the profits, which it clearly appears are taken out of the public by the defendant and its subsidiary companies, are possible now, what will be the result if this enormous and steadily growing aggregation of wealth were permitted to charge its own rates, as it claims it has a right to do, without supervision by governmental authority, and has full power to discriminate against those municipal and industrial plants and factories which it may desire to crush out and buy? There must be considered, too, that with the constantly decreasing competition from the coal supply, which must be conserved to prevent exhaustion, and which is so frequently interrupted by strikes, the power the defendant claims of unrestricted rates and of absolute right to discriminate between purchasers would make it a despotism beyond a parallel in history.
It must be remembered that the men who are organizing this mighty power and moving on to their consummation are the same who organized the American Tobacco Company, with a capital of $350,000, and in a few years made it into a combination of $350,000,000, i. $1,000 for every $1 they claimed to have put in, and that the Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States were forced to take hold and cause its dissolution as an enemy of the Republic. The history of that movement and the names of the men indicted, 29 in number, among them the leaders in this organization, are set out in the United States v. American Tobacco Co., quoted above, and more than one of the leaders in this movement appear also as defendants in the proceedings to dissolve the Standard Oil Company, which is reported in the same volume (221 U. S.) of the United States Supreme Court Reports.
The highest considerations of the public welfare require that the rates of this company and their subsidiaries, and the rates of those who, like the plaintiff, resell the current for light and power, shall be strictly supervised and reduced to a reasonable profit.
But, as already said above, the sole question in this case is not what is a reasonable rate, nor are the courts called upon to fix the rate (not in the first instance at least), but shall the defendant be required to sell its current and power to all alike, without discrimination in prices, when under like conditions. The court below properly overruled the demurrer.
Affirmed.