SOUND EFFECTS AND CROCODILE TEARS

...Speaking of operating expenses, the utilities wouldn't have so much to kick about if they weren't pouring out buckets of cash for anti-public ownership drives...

...In spite of this, however, net earnings available for investors have remained at a constant level—5.8 per cent over the six year period...

...And those tears over the imminence of the utility industry's doom are strictly crocodile...

...It was, as it always is, the people who pay the electric bills...

...Called "The Financial Record of the Electric Utility Industry, 1937-1943," the survey is a summary of the composite financial statements of the companies representing 98 per cent of the entire privately owned utility industry...

...More than $800,000 of this money wTas spent for newspaper advertising smearing public ownership...

...There isn't much in those remarkable figures to furnish the basis for genuine complaint, and that's only half of the story...

...number of customers rose 15 per cent, and electric revenues 38 per cent...

...Remembering the instability of the industry in the past, this is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from a Federal Power Commission survey recently released...

...If there is any of that kind of bunk in your community, write to the Federal Power Commission in Washington, D. C, and ask for a copy of FPC S-36A...

...As one will readily hear, with ear-drum splitting ex-plosiveness, whenever a utility executive is approached, operating expenses and taxes have gone up...

...Here are some of the findings taken from the survey: Some Remarkable Figures Because of the new uniform system of accounts and other regulatory measures prescribed by the FPC some 400 million dollars of inflation was eliminated from the utility plant accounts...

...And whom do you think paid for it...

...The FPC recently investigated and discovered that five companies had spent a million dollars on the issue a year before it came up for the decision of the voters...

...The average investment in plant per dollar of revenue, which was $5.47 in 1937, was $4.28 in 1943...

...Meanwhile, depreciation reserves have been increased by more than one billion dollars or slightly in excess of 70 per cent...

...For the FPC report demonstrated the astounding fact that this money was charged to "operating expense" by the utilities and "operating expenses" are included in the rate base...

...Net plant investment, after deducting reserves for depreciation, actually decreased during the period...

...Ever since those bleak days when our frantic utility executives were rescued by the Government -from the shambles left by Insull, Hobson, et al, there has been a steady and unremitting howl that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Power Commission are motivated by a passionate desire to wreck the utility industry...

...As the law now stands it restricts a PUD to one county, putting the publicly owned systems at the mercy of the large private companies...

...Not the utility executives and the stooge taxpayer organizations they promoted...

...The consumers, in other words, were compelled to finance a campaign against themselves...

...Sound Effects And Crocodile Tears By MILES McMILLSN IN CASE you haven't been around to find out, that frightful howling and wailing of the power trusters concerning the havoc wrought in their industry by government regulation are mere sound effects...

...Similarly, net investment was $4.88 per dollar revenue in 1937, and $3.55 in 1943...

...FPC orders alone accounted for more than 300 million dollars of amounts in excess of original cost...

...Fighting Themselves Some observers out in the Pacific Northwest estimate that the big utilities have dumped as much as $10,000,-000 into the fight...

...The people of Washington will have made a grave mistake if they do not support "Referendum 25" in the November election, just as people everywhere will be fooled if they let the utilities get away with the present howling against the regulatory controls of the Federal Government...

...These very large increases were accompanied by an increase of only seven per cent in plant investment...

...It won't cost a penny and it will give you valuable ammunition to chuck at the first calamity-howler to open his mouth...

...generating capacity jumped 22 per cent...

...Out in the state of Washington, for example, the people are trying to pass a referendum which will give them a right to extend and make more effective their Public Utility Districts...

...The plain and indisputable fact is that, thanks to strengthening of regulatory controls, the utility industry is in better condition today than it ever has been...

...In the six year period kilowatt-hour sales increased 75 per cent...