TELEPHONE TRUST HELD BUYING POWER CURB
Telephone Trust Held Buying Power Curb Cons u m e r s Hard Put to Pay Bills for Service WASHINGTON. D. C—Consumers arc giving up more and more goods and services for telephone services and...
...In other words...
...She estimated that 150.000 jobs at an average $20 weekly wage have been lost during the last 15 years due to the dial...
...Miss Sullivan, who was an organizer for the Int...
...With 1923 to 1925 representing 100...
...It merely transfers labor from ihe operator who gets wages, to the subscriber who doesn't...
...Service Cost Rises Kreps took the stand after Rose Su-livan...
...Payrolls Down Again using the 1823-:>5 period as representing 100, payrolls in 1929 were 146 while in 1938 they were 135...
...This trend, he declared, represents a distortion of consumer purchasing power from the community to the pockets of the stockholders of A. T. & T. Another chart presented by Kreps showed how income of the company tended to go more and more to the stockholders and less and less to the workers in the form of payrolls...
...They all suddenly find husbands or other jobs or win sweepstakes or something," she declared sarcastically...
...Economic committee was told here as it continued its study of technological advances in industry...
...The personnel factor Is very vital in a corporation such as the A. T. & T. which has a decidely anti-union bias," she said...
...That $10,000,000 a year is iost to the silk stocking, grocery and other trades where the money would have been spent...
...Dividends and interest rose from 154 to 179 while operating revenue varied from 162 in 1929 to 157 in 1938...
...Loomis Calls M. O. Sound Business Move MILWAUKEE—Public ownership of electric utilities Is "just plain, sound, conservative, business sense," Orland S. Loomis, Mauston, former state attorney general and former chief of the Rural Electrification administration in Wisconsin, declared here last week m a talk before the Business and Professional Women's club of Milwaukee...
...Anyway they all 'resign' according to the company at the most appropriate moment...
...The economist implied that tthe accumulation of surplus funds was one of the reasons the company went in for technological improvements even though the improvements might not result in increased profits...
...It does not reduce human labor...
...D. C—Consumers arc giving up more and more goods and services for telephone services and receiving less and less in increased purchasing power, the Temporary Natl...
...Kreps said, the amount given up by a community for telephone service has risen from 151 in 1929 to no In li)?,8...
...Loamls dprlarpd private utilities fought the development of the REA because they "did not want any yardsticks established in the rural field In Wisconsin...
...Kreps said, you had to work harder and give up more to receive telephone service despite technological improvements In telephon service...
...of Electrical Workers lAFL inmong the telephone opera'.ors in New England, charged that the A T. & T. installed the dial system In an effort to forestall organization and avoid personnel trouble...
...Yet the dial telephone is practically-useless in an emergency and makes more mistakes than the operator does, Miss Sullivan continued...
...Public ownership of waterworks, schools, highways, and postal service has been met with "universal satisfaction" so there, is "little wonder" that there is a similar trend in the direction of public ownership of electric power, Loomis declared...
...representing the Commercial Telegraphers Union < AFL), and W. H. Harrison, vice president of A. T. & T. clashed on the value of dial telephones...
...They All "Resign" She attacked vigorously the contention that the company takes care of operators alter the Installation ot dial systems...
...economic adviser to the TNEC, presented a chart and table, which, he said, showed the amount of work a community had to do to receive telphone service and the amount of return to the community in the way of services and employment...
...Not a day too soon while they are still needed for operation of the manual boards and not a day too late when after the cut-over, their presence on the payroll would be an expense and embarrassment...
...At the same time the community received 136 In 1929 and 1.11 in 1938 in the way of service and employment declined from 129 in 1029 to 93 in 19311...
...The dial telephone," she concluded, "is the perfect example of a wasteful, expensive, inefficient, clumsy, antisocial device being substituted for satisfactory, competent human labor which received wages for work now performed at exactly Ihe same expenditure of human effort without the compensation of wages...
...Kreps pointed to the increasing amount of idle funds in the hands of t...
...The trend of the payroll figure was down while the trend of the dividend and revenue figures was upward...
...T. J. Krcps...
...Loomis stated that while immediate needs do not demand complete public ownership of electric utilities, the present demand, when measured In terms of need, calls for ownership of the great bulk of generation and distribution of electric power under public ownership "And when the consumer public becomes fully aware that the oiwratlon of electric utilities for the public under public ownership Js Just plain, sound, conservative, business sense, the ownership by the public will become ever more potential," Lomis said...
...stockholders while telephones all over the country continue to draw revenue from millions of households...
Vol. 10 • April 1940 • No. 17
