IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2018 - 93

to any person or corporation." he wanted
to make sure that New Yorkers understood those disputes. "Let me here make
clear the three divisions of this technical
side of the question. first, the construction of the dams, the erection of the powerhouses and the installation of the turbines
necessary to convert the force of the falling water into electricity; second, the
construction of many thousands of miles
of transmission lines to bring the current
so produced to the smaller distributing
centers throughout the state; and third,
the final distribution of this power in thousands of homes and factories. how much
of this shall be undertaken by the state,
how much of this carried out by properly
regulated private enterprises, how much
of this by some combination of the two, is
the practical question that we have before
us." to date, the Public service commission had failed to reduce the political influence of the holding companies, which
the beloved comedian of the era, will
rogers, described as "a thing where you
hand an accomplice the goods while the
policeman searches you."
by 1932, wrote energy analyst L.s.
hyman, "the eight largest holding
companies controlled 73 percent of the
investor-owned electric business," and
virtually all of these were controlled,
directly or indirectly, by Morgan. "at
the top of the industry," say the utility
historians rudolph and ridley, "were
the equipment manufacturers, led by
General electric, which controlled the
stock of hundreds of local power companies. tied in at the top levels were
the major banks and investment houses
that supplied the money for constant
expansion, and the fuel companies that
provided coal and later oil and uranium
for the power use that doubled every
decade." small banks also enhanced
their local political influence by granting large loans to power companies.
the private utilities collaborated
through the National electric Lighting
association (NeLa) to fund lobbying,
elect local candidates to derail regulatory
action, and prevent public control of their
monopolies. In 1926 alone, NeLa delivered one consistent message that reached
some 2.5 million people face to face: primarch/april 2018

vate power was the only reliable route to
the future. "the empire's influence," noted rudolph and ridley, "ran from local
city halls to the corridors of the federal
government. each power company was
given a monopoly right to a geographic
territory by a city or town. Pennsylvania
Governor Gifford Pinchot insisted that

"nothing like this gigantic monopoly
had ever appeared in the history of the
world," and it seemed unstoppable.
two months after he became governor, fDr proposed a commission to
study development of waterpower, specifically along the st. Lawrence river.
"the great preponderance of public

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