THE OLD INSULL CROWD IS BACK

...THE UTILITIES are feeling their oats in other fields too...

...IF YOU don't believe it, I call your attention to a statement issued by Howard L. Aller, president of the American Power and Light Company, the holding concern which owned the Omaha utility and transferred it to the citizens group...

...Boren, Aller intimated, could not be trusted because his information came "from an Omaha attorney and others who are interested in opposing public ownership...

...According to reports the libations flowed almost as freely as the hot air as the newly resurrected plun-derbund mixed liquor and propaganda for capital newsmen...

...A new super-duper organization has been formed in Washington, D. C, to fight public ownership...

...Perennially in litigation, North American and its officials are figuring prominently in 2 more outstanding cases...

...Louis, Mo...

...Boren are going...

...A utility big-wig attacking forces "opposed to public ownership," then denouncing public ownership, and finally hauling the old utility gag about equal taxes out of the grab bag as the only solution to his own confusion...

...While this does not represent an advance in their social thinking, it at least indicates that'they have become more intelligent in recognizing their own selfish interests...

...The last few peeks apparently established the fact that the coast is clear for the lid has been flung" completely off and the boys have scrambled out and are going about talking and acting as if they have been going to church and sitting down next to all of us these past 10 years...

...In the past 2 years or more this column has been watching the ashcan to which the power trusters retired back in the early '30s and has been faithfully reporting each time the lid is lifted to permit a pair of greedy, beady eyes to case the joint...

...The suit against Williams, Dulles, and others seeks to recover 39 million dollars and alleges breach of trust and mismanagement...

...The case must now await a new appointment...

...THE North American crowd is also being sued by the accounting trustees in bankruptcy for the Central States Electric Corporation, a Harrison Williams super-holding company which caved in on the security holders a few years ago...

...Some months ago a citizens' committee was formed to buy up this last privately-operated utility in Nebraska to operate on a non-profit basis with the announced purpose of ultimately making it a publicly-owned system...

...We don't mind, the big boys said, if the Government develops our rivers just as long as we can go on making our profits...

...A new propaganda organization has been formed in New York to fight the St...

...I am suspicious that the big hullabaloo about it is just another power trust howl about tax exemption, for publicly owned utility systems...

...One of these is before the Supreme Court testing the constitutionality of the Holding Company Act...

...Lawrence Seaway and its proposed hydroelectric development...

...Williams is said to have built Central^States on a shoe string and cleaned up millions from investors...

...The challenge is to a SEC order integregating the sprawling North American system...

...Simultaneous with the announcement of the formation of a new propaganda-lobbying group, the utilities came through with a widely circulated statement on their position regarding proposed Government river developments such as the Missouri Valley Authority...

...Boren is known to be anything but a friend of public power...

...But while the big boys have been jumping around and popping off on one thing and another, the Government has been stirring a little too, and may get around to some unfinished business against some of the big companies...

...There are a lot of loud charges and countercharges being made and things have become so confused that a big utility executive started smearing a party to the deal because of the latter's anti-public ownership views...

...Another case is pending against North American—a civil case arising out of the same scandal...

...But it's impossible to tell which way the Congressional hearings now being conducted by Rep...

...That's why I think the whole Omaha explosion is a power trust stunt to put over a program taxing publicly owned utilities in the name of all things—public ownership...

...It's impossible to make anything out of the case as yet...

...This new outfit, which will have plenty of war dollars to throw around, will be known as the Association of Electric Light and Power Companies...

...There's another mess involving the utilities which has lately been claiming headlines...

...Labor's interpretation may or may not be true, but it is certain that the whole Omaha transaction has all the elements of a first class mystery...

...It has to do with some mysterious developments concerning the utility serving Omaha, Neb...

...It is considered significant that the head of the new organization is Purcell L. Smith, president of the Middle West Corporation, Insull's old outfit, showing how the old Insull crowd is back in the saddle...

...They have enlisted powerful labor support in this fight...

...They therefore recommend that power produced at Government dams be turned over to private companies for distribution...

...Lyle Boren, Oklahoma Democrat, charged in the House that this arrangement was a gigantic swindle, that it was designed to give private investors a chance to clean up by capitalizing the tax savings under the non-profit arrangement...

...Among those being sued are Williams and our old friend John Foster Dulles, whose life is full of plans for international peace organizations, church activities, and utility scandals...

...Aller, it has been hinted, has had his mit in the whole thing right from the start and appeared to have hit upon a scheme whereby even public ownership could be made to pay off for the utilities...

...There you have it...

...At a recent organizational meeting, Matthew Woll, vice president of the American Federation of Labor, spoke vigorously against the project...

...These savrtrgs were capitalized to support security issues which were bought up by eastern utility financiers, according to Boren...

...It is brought by Frank J. Boehm, former vice president of Union Electric, who charges that North American officials talked him into taking the rap for criminal conduct of Union Electric...

...THE new organization was officially launched with a large cocktail party in Washington recently...

...It will doubtless take the place of the National Electric Light Association which was caught some years ago, when Sam Insull was calling signals for the utility industry, buying up college professors wholesale and needling text books with its propaganda syringe...

...Now it's all right with them if the people will build the dams and let the utilities exploit them for profit...

...Subsequent hearings on this boiling issue have caused a great deal of confusion in public power ranks...

...This will be recognized as a drastic change from the old uncompromising days when the utilities were even opposed to beavers building dams...

...The case has been resting in Justice Department files for several years...

...A few weeks ago Rep...

...To make it even more confusing this utility executive, after dusting off Boren by impugning the reliability of those "opposed to public ownership," continued with this stem-winder: "I am not in sympathy with the socialistic trend evidenced by the spread of public ownership of electric utility properties . . . This trend can only be reversed by legislation which will tax all publicly owned utlities equally with the privately owned utlities...

...The court was preparing to hear arguments when Justice Roberts resigned and again finds itself without a quorum to hear the arguments...

...The Securities and Exchange Commission investigated North American's part in this scandal and recommended prosecution...

...It has been delayed for more than 2 years because some of the Supreme Court justices disqualified themselves from sitting on the case...

...Labor, the voice of the Railroad Brotherhoods, has strongly intimated that Boren is playing the power trust hand on this deal...

...The Department of Justice may take action against the giant North American Company in connection with the use of a large slush fund shown to have been spent by its principal subsidiary, Union Electric of St...