THE PROBLEM OF PAUL AND JIMMY
McMillin, Miles
Public Power News The Problem Of Paul And Jimmy By MILES McMILLIN HERE IS YOUR PROBLEM: Who and what can you believe on this issue of public versus private ownership of utilities? How can you...
...Eagan was once president, have lost their appeal to the United States Supreme Court...
...There was that one in Iowa, for instance...
...Can't be trusted, you know...
...But right in the middle of the pinch he let them down...
...They will tell you that the money for that purpose comes from "kick-backs...
...He wouldn't come in and testify that he had been paid large sums of money because he was afraid that the Treasury Department might have a few questions to ask about some omissions in his income tax reports...
...Eagan, all of whom are the unfortunate victims of a bad system, if the people owned the whole thing...
...They distributed a $600,000 slush fund and got caught...
...Did Paul Packard's hard earned money help elect an official who was sworn to protect the interests of the utilities above the interests of the people...
...Especially those lawyers...
...Not the sordid socialism of TVA and Bonneville and REA, but the America about which Wendell Willkie has expressed his passionate paeans...
...It .makes no difference whether their money was bounced off a lawyer or a contractor before it went around undermining free elections and representative government...
...For example: You pick up almost any newspaper or magazine published in the last month or so and you see a big full page advertisement...
...They Got Caught Then you go plowing through the paper, and, if you are a diligent reader, you will find, buried way back in the want-ad section, a little stick of type telling you that Louis H. Eagan and the Union Electric Company of St...
...Eagan is going to sit two years in the federal rowdy house and pay a fine of $10,000 and the company is going to pay $80,000...
...Eagan who, let it be said, is beset with more temptations than the average individual because he has the unenviable job of protecting an institution that has outlived its usefulness...
...And so your problem, stated specifically, is: Would it not be better for Paul, Jimmy, and Mr...
...You say to yourself, "Here is the real America...
...Did Jimmy's pennies help to buy a vote against a public ownership bill in the Missouri legislature...
...How can you take a stand when there is so much conflicting material being pushed at you every day...
...that contractors and attorneys who do work for them turn back part of their handsome fees to make up the slush funds...
...And they will add that it is no bed of roses dealing with those lawyers and contractors...
...Victims Of A Bad System But being a thoughtful kind of a person you realize that this does not explain your awful doubts about Jimmy and Paul...
...So you sit there wondering whether it is worth while to permit Jimmy and Paul to contribute to the delinquency of Mr...
...Who can say...
...You are informed that Jimmy, because his banker invests his savings in utility stock, has just as much a stake in the local electric company as Paul...
...You see a picture of Jimmy, the newsboy, in the act of selling one of his papers to Paul Packard, the owner of some stock in the local utility...
...The utilities will naturally deny that they used Jimmy's pennies or Paul's dollars for slush...
...Can it be, you ask, that good old Paul Packard or that little innocent Jimmy had something to do with this...
...The coward...
...This is all because they did something on which the utility industry is known to frown severely...
...It was still their money...
...He was hired because he was known far and wide as a gambler and a gambler is always a convenient man to have around when someone wants an explanation of the mysterious comings and goings of large sums of money...
...Louis, of which Mr...
...And to do that it requires, more often than not, some pretty crooked scheming...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 52
