ST. LAWRENCE BACK IN THE NEWS
McMillin, Miles
Public Power News St. Lawrence Back In The News By MILES McMILLIN THE St. Lawrence Seaway development, which has been kicked around Washington for the past decade with the well-heeled utility...
...Sen...
...La Follette named 18 papers spread all over the nation in which the Hofer propaganda appeared simultaneously...
...Aiken won support from an unexpected source when Sen...
...You are talking about an invisible but powerful force that I have been fighting throughout my political career, and which finally got me in the last election," Holman declared...
...Lawrence frontier...
...Not long ago it was sending out propaganda praising the industrial statesmanship of W. S. Murphy, the lord high priest of the Morgan-controlled Electric Bond and Share, one of the biggest holding companies in the nation...
...It will be practically impossible for anyone to find out what the cost of any individual property or group of properties was...
...Lawrence project to newspapers all over the country...
...Holman agreed that the utilities were fighting full utilization of public power resources...
...La Follette charged that the utility interests are conducting an "underground campaign" to defeat* the project and laid before the Senate evidence that a utility-financed propaganda agency is flooding the country with anti-seaway diatribes...
...It is this eastern control of the stock ownership and management of the western roads that established the connection between the power issue and the attitude of the western railroad managements...
...Rufus Holman, Oregon Republican, who wa3 defeated in the last primary election in his state, arose to back up La Follette's statements...
...Lawrence Seaway development, which has been kicked around Washington for the past decade with the well-heeled utility lobby doing most of the booting, has popped back into prominence...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Wisconsin Progressive, and Sen...
...The amendment was introduced by Sen...
...Tracing opposition to the development, La Follette charged that great financial interests in Boston and New York, made up of large stockholders and directors of major railroads, had set out to block the proposal...
...Arthur Vandenberg, Michigan Republican, who is known for his record against public power developments, arose to say that Aiken's remarks had his "full endorsement...
...The Hofer outfit is well known in power circles for the year-in-and-year-out smear campaign it carries on against public ownership...
...This agency, E. Hofer and Sons of Portland, Oreg, which has been shown by investigations of the Federal Trade Commission to be backed by utility money, has been sending out "canned editorials" against the St...
...George Aiken, Vermont Republican, have teamed up in an effort to force some action on the controversial measure...
...Friends of the Seaway are trying to obtain Senate approval of the project by passage of an amendment to the Rivers and Harbors Bill...
...Industrial Statesmanship' Murphy, who is conducting a power trust- sponsored campaign to have the Government turn its vast public power enterprises over to the utilities, is the same man who has been exposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as counselling Bond and Share subsidiaries to engage in illegal reorganization practices...
...Both Senators opened the fight with a broadside at the power trust which they claimed has been and is now obstructing passage of the legislation...
...Aiken who spoke in its behalf, outlining the tremendous transportation savings to be realized by the Great Lakes area if an all water route were opened to the Atlantic...
...I believe that the commission would not approve the Susquehanna reorganization, but they might approve it if it would be impossible to determine at what figure the various properties were going in...
...In pointing out the value of the St...
...Lawrence proposal, Aiken recalled that in 1921 "the Aluminum Company of America, the General Electric Company, and the du Pont Company united under the name of the Frontier Corporation to acquire and develop the power of the St...
...The type of "industrial statesmanship" the Hofer outfit would like to see go unchecked is best illustrated in this quotation from Murphy's letter to a Pennsylvania1 subsidiary undergoing reorganization: "The Pennsylvania commission will find it much more difficult to unravel the cost of the various properties if the two reorganizati6ns are mixed up together...
...Utilities Change View Both Aiken and La Follette charge that the forces now aligned against the Seaway project once favored it when they sought to devolop the area for their own profit...
...Railroads and private utilities now opposed to the development, La Follette told the Senate, favored it before, but have changed because of the Administration's insistence on developing the water power for public distribution of electricity...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 51
