"Honest" Utility Graft in the Bay State
LEWIS, ALFRED BAKER
By Alfred Baker Lewis "Honest" Utility Graft in the Bay State Here Is Told in Detail a Story of the Operations of a Group of Utility Companies— This b the Way the Masses Are Mulcted...
...We must step forward boldly...
...Along with the Industrial Revolution has come capitalism, and production for profit...
...The judge ordered the bailiff brought into the courtroom for questioning...
...These hindrances were placed upon them by a king, completely dominated by the merchant and moneyed classes of England...
...The fault lies not in democracy, but in those who have villified democracy...
...he misery and starvation of white workers so prevalent in the South can only be abolished by unity with black workers," he said...
...These deveolpments in the Scottshoro case came within a few minutes— but those minutes were crammed to the full with drama...
...Those leaders of 1776 did their work and did it well...
...Today the world Is faced with another problem — an Industrial one...
...And it must solve the problems of today just as the 1776 Continental Congress solved the problems of that era...
...This clique comprises those financiers and capitalists who have all but wrecked our country...
...Despite these revelations, however, the public utilities companies are still getting away with murder in Massachusetts and even in Cambridge itself...
...When their demands proved of no avail they translated them into action...
...Just as the 1775 Continental Congress gave us political democracy, so must the 1933 Continental Congress open the way to industrial democracy...
...There is in the United States today a clique who claims democracy has failed, and who seeks dictatorship...
...Llebowitc, on his way to Decatur, was reached and said he would return to New York...
...We must not fall them...
...S. Liebowits about "bigoted) lanter -jawed Ju-bts," and an inflammatory reply by Knight, which the judge read In full...
...This Second Continental Congress was called in 1775...
...It will be composed of farmers and workers, and will draw up plans for the economic reconstruction of our broken down industrial machine...
...After a long conference, the bailiff testified that ruror had talked to his sick wife, another to a druggist, another to a clothes cleaner...
...Today there is a new cold and hunger, and a new fear of oppression...
...On to Washington...
...The biggest opportunity for graft in the public utility industry exists in cases where there are holding companies controlling a number of subsidiaries...
...This system has broken down periodically, and has now become hopelessly entangled...
...We must set up a national council of the people, which will exert the pressure of pur mass strength to win legislation for the benefit of farmers and workers, both employed and unemployed...
...Yet our problems are different...
...Our ancestors set up Committees of Correspondence, organized a Continental Congress and demanded a righting of their grievances...
...A crisis as that one which our revolutionary forefathers so successfully battled...
...The J. G. White Corporation is one of the subsidiaries within the associated Gas and Electric System used to milk the operating companies...
...but the majority of them are too canny for this...
...For almost four years our farm and city populations have valiantly and calmly withstood unemployment, cold and hunger...
...We must work diligently to safeguard the families and homes of all fellow-Americans...
...Yet the Cambridge company did not change its managing officials in any way except to increase their salaries, or gain a single offsetting decrease in its managerial' expense...
...Above all, we must have foresight an vision...
...Yet there is plenty food for thought in the management of that company...
...Yet, despite our patience, and despite our hope, little has been accomplished on our behalf...
...Let us remember those leaders of the American Revolution...
...It is time for us to draw up a program to right our grievous wrongs...
...They solved the problem of their day—a political one...
...Specifically, it appeared that $0,000 had been given by the N.K.LA...
...Knight then launched into an oration on Alabama justice...
...Some of the details of these contracts are worthy of special mention...
...They willingly leave us the cloak of democracy, behind which they may hide and pull the strings that make our elected officials jump...
...The time may not be far off when our opponents will face us openly with their show of force, as they did in the Bonus Rout of last July, but while it is still possible we must hold fast to the American democratic tradition...
...Chairman, Continental Congress on Economic Reconstruction A NEW crisis grips America...
...those who have used her name to attain privilege and power, and control over supposed public servants...
...There is the cold and hunger of babes and mothers, and of unemployed millions—starving in thia great land of ours, with its bountiful resources...
...Surely we have suffered long enough...
...Under Brodsky's crossexamination, the bailiff admitted he didn't know what was said over the telephone...
...This is the new task for those who love their country...
...They valiantly pushed on through tha cold and hunger of Valley Forge...
...They must be made to give a decent wage, a decent standard of living, and an ample security to all American citizens...
...As a result of that Congress a second was called...
...The consequence of going into this system has been contracts made by the Cambridge company with other subsidiaries in the Associated Gas and Electric System, whereby the Cambridge company is effectively milked for the protit of the insiders in the Associated Gas and Electric...
...The Cambridge company, as soon as it was absorbed into the Associated Gas and Electric System, concluded a contract with the Utilities Purchasing and Supply Company whereby it obtained purchasing advice and assistance from the latter company for V/jr/0 of the total amount of all purchases made by or for it It concluded another contract with the W. S. Barstow Company for engineering advice and assistance to be furnished at a charge of T/,% on all the cost of all the additions and extensions to plant that the Cambridge Company might make no matter whether the Barstow Company does it or not...
...Investigations were to be conducted, to tc sure, under the direction of a professor at the Graduate School of Business Administration...
...Right Hand and Left Hand Of course, the stock of these milking companies is almost wholly owned by the holding company of the Associated Gas and Electric System, except for the necessary qualifying shares for directors...
...Brodsky answered with a statement placing responsibility for the impossibility of gett'ig justice for the Scottsboro boys on "the Southern ruling class and its theory of white pupremaey...
...We must make the 1933 Continental Congress another milestone in the forward journey of America...
...Others of the milkiner subsidiaries of the Associated Gas and Electric System include the Utilities Purchasing and Supply Corporation and the W. S. Barstow & Company, Inc...
...He therefore ordered the trial of Weems postponed until July 10, when a date for trial wi" be set...
...The seeds of this problem were sown during the decades of the birth of this nation, in that peaceful and gradual evolution, known to history as the Industrial Revolution...
...Before he was questioned, however, AttorneyGeneral Knight was allowed to talk with him privately, first in the courtroom and then i-* an adjoining room...
...We must cherish and uphold all that has evolved as an American heritage...
...The publicly-owned companies, of course, charge considerably less...
...After paying the Cambridge company a satis* factory profit for the generating of electricity, it is able to furnish electricity to domestic consumer...
...And when the operating company in, Cambridge concludes contracts with the various milking subsidiaries of the Associated Gas and Electric System, it is simply the right hand of tha system making a contract with its left...
...On to Washington...
...As an outgrowth of that Revolution, too, man has invented new comforts, and discovered new sciences and methods for combatting disease and death...
...American Style Fascists Washington, Franklin, Jefferson gave us our democratic institutions, with the right to vote and to petition Congress...
...High spot in the drama was the way Haywood Patterson faced the judge when he was asked whether he had anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced, and said, simply: "I am innocent) I did not get'a fair trial...
...For probably the first time in a Southern courtroom there wal heard a straight plea for the unity of whites and Negroes...
...For a New Continental Congress By Emil Rieve President, American Federation of Ftdl Fashioned Hosiery Workers...
...A few of them want an open dictatorship, and open dominance of capital over labor...
...They were fearless and dauntless...
...Wheels Within Wheels The Cambridge Electric Light Company is a subsidiary of the Associated Gas and Electric System...
...It must be changed, and our machines must be made to produce for the use of all, for the common good of all citizens...
...for only 4c a kilowatt hour, toss 8% discount recently allowed to overcome the federal tax...
...Philip Cabot, formerly a vice-president of the New England Power Association, a holding company whose subsidiaries control a large part of the electric light and power companies in Massachusetts outside of the Boston district...
...A FEW years ago the staid c i t i z e n s of Cambridge, Mass., were startled by the information brought out in an investigation of the electric light and power industry conducted by the Federal Trade Commission that Harvard University was on the payroll of the National Electric Light Association...
...Its task culminated in 1776, in that noble document, the Declaration of Independence...
...He quoted specifically a purported interview with Defense Attorney S:.m...
...To bt continued) SC01TSB0R0 TRIALS OFF DECATUR, Alabama.—Haywood Patterson was condemned to die in the electric chair in Kilby Prison June 16 by Judge Horton, the trial of Charlie Weems was postponed until the July 10 term of court because, as the judge admitted, there is no possibility of a fair trial, and 30 days were allowed to argue a motion fof a new trial in the Decatur court April 17...
...Today a new Continental Congress has been called to meet in Washington on May 6th and 7th...
...By Alfred Baker Lewis "Honest" Utility Graft in the Bay State Here Is Told in Detail a Story of the Operations of a Group of Utility Companies— This b the Way the Masses Are Mulcted Everywhere—Details May Differ, But Methods Are the Same Wherever American Utilities Operate to "Serve" People and Make Huge Profits...
...Furthermore, the additional costs caused by these contracts between the right and left hands of the holding company go to swell the expense of the operating company, and constitute a reason for the operating company to resist reductions in the charge for electricity...
...We must recognise the failure of the old, and prepare to build the new...
...We, too, have waited patiently...
...As an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution man has developed gigantic machinery, and achieved methods of manufacturing and transportation scarcely less than miraculous...
...They were forced to fight oppressive taxes, and laws which restricted their commerce and deprived them of their liberty, property and happiness...
...Today we in America are forced to fight poverty, hunger and economic insecurity which homes and threaten our very lives...
...From that Congress flowed the spirit that has given America a political democracy— the first and foremost on this earth...
...We must outline a far-seeing and constructive program...
...Then Judge Horton dramatically read a prepared statement admitting the impossibility of a fair trial for Weems due to "prejudicial statements and sinister influences...
...As a matter of fact, despite all these additional loads on expense the Cambridge Company is charging 5c per kilowatt hour for electricity for domestic lighting, which is somewhat less than is usual throughout the state in the privately-owned companies...
...The town of Belmont, for example, contiguous to Cambridge, has a publiely owned distributing plant, and buys its electricity from the r-— —-- m Cambridge company...
...but the professor selected Was Mr...
...They fought and suffered that we might have our cherished Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights...
...The change of political parties in Washington has not shaken the grip of economic rulers...
...Next was the sensational charge made by Defense Attorney Joseph Brodsky that jurors had telephoned to others while considering the case, which usually calls for a mistrial...
...The times call for action and a new Declaration of Independence...
...However, he has often been blinded and forgetful — even to allowing permitting vast accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, and foolishly using his new found machines for his own destruction, as in the late World War...
...Today there are more men out of work in our country than at any other time in its history...
...But the socalled independent companies are not free of graft The Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Boston, which is still paying 12% dividends despite the depression, is supposed independent so far as control by any holding company is concerned...
...We must translate the spirit of 1776 into the spirit of modern American democracy...
...The Problem of Today The most notable example of that tradition was the First Continental Congress...
...to Harvard University to conduct certain investigations for them...
...After the Cambridge Electric Light Company had been absorbed into the Associated Gas and Electric System it concluded a contract with the J. G. White Management Corporation to have the latter concern furnish it with managerial advice and assistance for 2>A% of the gross income of the Cambridge company...
...Again America has come to a parting of the ways...
...This advice, however, is evidently of not much value, for the J. G. White Management Corporation gets additional fees for engineering advice on the construction done by Barstow & Company for the Cambridge company...
...The latter is, or rather was, the propaganda body for the public utility companies in the electric field, and made such an unsavory record for itself in its efforts to buy up public opinion that it was disbanded and replaced by another body intended to do more or less the same thing but in not quite so crude a way...
...This time it is the industrialists and bankers, who have become rich through the people's misery...
...They founded a political democracy whose strength has Increased with time...
...It is to accomplish this purpose that the new Continental Congress has been called...
...Again a government has become dominated by a p r i v i 1 e ged class...
Vol. 15 • April 1933 • No. 16
