THE UTILITIES GET SLAPPED DOWN
McMillin, Miles
Public Power News The Utilities Get Slapped Down By MILES McMILLIN SENSING what it thinks is a growing apathy among the people toward vital issues, the power trust has embarked on a campaign to...
...Fortunately, an alert Progressive minority was able to block its passage until the legislature quit recently, but not until several test votes showed that the power trust had almost solid Republican support...
...Aiken charged that P. G. and E. was extracting an exorbitant tribute from the people in California, pointing out that if Tacoma, Washington, municipal rates applied in California the total electric bill would be reduced by $101,000,000...
...Trouble In California, Too Progressives in the U. S. Senate were successful recently in blocking another greedy grab on the part of the utilities in California...
...The number one inducement offered to industrialists is: "Moving your plant to Tennessee places it in position to utilize the giant hydroelectric system of TVA and to take advantage of the lowest power rates in Eastern America...
...was siphoned in by the same old power trust methods—just take a pen and add a few dozen ciphers to the actual value and then charge rates on the basis of the fiction . . . Here is the height of something-or-other in anti-Missouri Valley Authority propaganda . . . J. W. McAfee, president of the Union Electric Company of St...
...The TIPC is an organization whose principal purpose is to attract industry to Tennessee...
...Hitherto the report has shown at least one privately owned utility among those charging the lowest rates in the nation and at least one publicly owned system among those charging the highest...
...old "socialists" who believe in public ownership of utilities...
...The Pacific Gas and Electric Company sought to monopolize the distribution of power at the Government's Shasta Dam in the Central Valley of California...
...bracket with Chattanooga, Knox-ville...
...Public Power News The Utilities Get Slapped Down By MILES McMILLIN SENSING what it thinks is a growing apathy among the people toward vital issues, the power trust has embarked on a campaign to sneak some of its fast punches over...
...The municipally owned plant in Hamilton, O., has the lowest rates for 15-kilowatt hours and shares the honors in the 25 kwh...
...the same eompany which was caught in a vast plot of corruption and bribery a few years ago) made a speech' against MVA recently in which he used the TVA as an example of what MVA would not be...
...Using its brains instead of its prejudices, the organization is emphasizing as its best selling point the availability of cheap public power in a national advertising campaign urging business to locate in Tennessee...
...This And That Fort Collins, Colo., has joined the thousands of communities in the United States which have completely paid off the debt on their utility systems and can now start turning the profits into lower rates . . . The Federal Power Commission has moved in with' the wringer on the Montana Power Company, Sen...
...Numerous manifestations of this new arrogance are popping up all « over the country...
...Representatives of 2 of the biggest utilities in the state sponsored the bill and lobbied for it...
...The Government will be completely at the mercy of Pacific Gas...
...A bill was introduced prohibiting municipalities from hiring experts on a contingent fee basis to assist them in negotiating the tricky legal barriers in an acquisition proceeding...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Wisconsin Progressive, and Sen...
...Memphis, and Nashville, all in Tennessee...
...The power trust's friends in the Senate sought to prevent an appropriation which would permit the Interior Department to construct transmission lines from the dam to local distributing points...
...Sen...
...Ta-coma, Wash., is again the lowest in the 40, 100, 250, and 500 brackets...
...The report shows a better record for public ownership than ever before...
...The Record Is Better Than Ever The Federal Power Commission has just issued its annual survey of typical electric rates in all cities over 50,000...
...Burton K. Wheeler's old enemy, and is squeezing out four-fifths of the claimed value of its holdings...
...This year there are no privately owned systems among those distributing at the lowest rates and no public systems among those charging the highest...
...he asked...
...Leading the fight in the Senate against the utilities were Sen...
...The ads proclaim Tennessee as the "First Public Power State...
...The water in the Montana Co...
...Shall the great power projects built with taxpayers' money be operated for the public good, or be turned over, lock, stock, and barrel, to a private corporation...
...Louis, Mo...
...Here in Wisconsin the utilities have sought to use a reactionary Republican legislature to put through legislation which would make it extremely difficult for a municipality to acquire its utility system...
...How brazen they have become can be seen from the fact that they didn't even bother to have a front man introduce the legislation...
...La Follette pointed out that if the transmission line were not erected the P. G. and E. "will stand between the dam and the people who want power...
...George Aiken, Vermont Republican...
...Big Business 'Socialists The Tennessee Industrial Planning Council of Nashville, Tenn., has joined us...
...Can it be that our industrialists could be induced to participate in what the power trust calls a "socialist experiment" just for material gain...
...What was undertaken as a public project will be transformed into an instrument of private gain and public oppression...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 28
