The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 28, 1917, Page 5

— Nothing is so important as to get out to the in the First district of North Dako to elect Baer, but to give him a tr emendously big under the opposition to the farmers. polls to VOTE FOR BAER, farmers’ man for congress ta. The League must register its full strength July 10, not only That is what will knock the pins from vote. Breaking An Electric Trust About the Power and Light Barons of Souther Owned Plant That Made The By OLIVER S. MORRIS. LOT of millionaires live at Pasadena, Cal. Tourists are taken along broad avenues lined with' spacious estates and told that not a family on both sides of the street, as far as the eye can reach, but that counts its bank account in seven figures. Here gather the money barons from all parts of the United States, to build their winter palaces amid the eucalyptus and pep- per trees. Thousands of the lesser rich fill the palatial hotels during the sea- son. They play golf and tennis while the snow is falling back home where they made their money. Fortunate indeed, thinks the average tourist, are those who can make their millions as well as spend them in a region that nature has favored with perpetual sunshine and flowers. But there are only a few such millionaires at Pasadena. Among them are a dozen or so who made their riches in the Southern California Edison company, a public service corporation that fur- nishes electric light and power to 20 odd- cities and towns, including Pasa- dena and a part of Los Angeles. Most of the officers and hoard of directors of the company live at Pasadena. They were satisfied a few years ago to pay 15 cents per kilowatt hour to light their big homes. It was kind of a family af- fair with them, since they owned and operated the.compuny that got the 15 cents. g But it is the irony of fate that Pasa- dena, the home of these electric light and power magnates, was the first city to rebel against them and their mon- opoly of the electric business of that part of Southern California of which Los Angeles is the hub. Also it was quite a jolt to these magnates. They can’t quite understand yet the 5-cent electric rate that prevails in Pasadena today. PEOPLE OBJECTED TO MONOPOLY PRICES There are other people besides mil- lionaires who live in this fair city— about 40,000 of them, and pretty much the same kind of people you would find anywhere in the United States. They objected to 15-cent electricity. They objected also to the poor service which the Southern California Edison com- pany was furnishing. They didn't care’ if their city was the home of the men who owned and operated the big hy- dro and steam plants that supplied Pasadena and a score of other com- munities with light and power. They didn't care if these magnates were the chief factor in the business and com- mercial life of the city, and were able to line up business men generally against municipal ownership. They weren’'t even satisfied when the elec- tric company, after municipal owner- ship began to be agitated, lowered the n California and a Publicly m Disgorge rate from 15 to 12% cents. They went ahead and built a municipal light plant. You would expect to find the history of a publicly “owned business venture started under these circumstances highly interesting. And so it is. “Pasa- dena has more millionaires than any other city of like size in the country and hence is dominated financially and commercially by interests opposed to public ownership ‘“on principle.” Pas- adena is the home of the men who owned a great corporation that mon- . opolized the electric business in a score of communities, including Pasadena. Here was certainly- a proposition worthy of the steel of the “agitators” who first proposed that Pasadena break the electric monopoly and get fair rates and good service for the people. The fight for the first bond issue for the municipal plant in the years just before 1906 was the usual one. It is duplicated everywhere when the peo- ple bestir themselves to do for them- selves at cost what rich corporations do for.them for profit. As before men- tioned, the company reduced its rate from 15 to 121% cents when municipal ownership began to be seriously agi- tated. Business men pointed out that this reduction was “more than fair,” “a generous concession by a public spirit- ed corporation.” Only “Socialists” and “professional agitators” would con- tinue to advocate municipal ownership Business street, Pasadena, Cal. after the company had thus indicated its good faith with the people, they argued. Why, they said, put the city in competition with its own citizens who were giving good service to the people at reduced rates? Municipal ownership, they'iusisted. meant graft, inefficiency and “politics.” It was “Socialism,” they said—whatever that was. But the people of Pasadena in 1906 voted $125,000 in city bonds as a start toward the building of a publicly owned light and power plant. THE PEOP.LE “STICK"” THROUGH A CRISIS Before 1908 the new city-owned plant took over the street lighting and in 1908 it started serving customers at 8 cents per kilowatt hour, against 1214 cents charged by the company. This started the fireworks. A year later the city cut to 7 cents and in 1910 to 5 cents, the present rate. The company at first met the city plant’s competing figure in Pasadena, ALTHOUGH IT LEFT ITS RATES IN THE OTHER COMMUNITIES IT WAS SERVING THE SAME AS BEFORE. Then the company cut under the city’s rate. It was a $20,000,000 corporation that the little publicly owned plant was buck- ing. The corporation had decided to put the city plant out of business by reducing rates under the minimum the city plant could exist on. By this meth- od it figured the city plant would get no customers, or would go broke in trying to furnish current at a losing rate in competition. But it didn’t work. Enough people stuck to the city service, even at the higher rate, to keep it going at a profit. The people were loyal, and so were the two newspapers of the city, at the start. Then interests in sym- pathy with the electric people bought one of the papers, which was used in an attempt to discredit the city plant and its management. This did not scare the people out. Enough of them stuck by their own plant, even when the company was offering electricity cheaper than the bedrock rate made by the city, and they showed their loyalty in an even more substantial way, de- spite the terrific fight being made on municipal ownership. They voted more bonds for the extension of the city- plant in 1908 and 1909. Each elec- tion was carried by over a two-thirds vote. At each election the people in- creased the - majority for municipal ownership and cut down the vote against it. TUnder .this condition 'of loyalty of the people for their dwn en- terprise it was in the cards that the PAGE FIVE company would lose in the end. And it did. CITY IS GAINING ON THE COMPANY The cutting of electric rates in Pas- adena to below cost by the company, while it was charging other communi- ~ ties served by its same plants twice and three times the rate charged in Pasadena, became a state issue. Pasa- dena asked the state for the aid it was entitled to to thwart a corporation that would resort to such methods to crush a people’s enterprise, and the legisla- ture of California responded in 1913. A state law was passed prohibiting a public service corporation from cutting rates in one community it served with- out cutting them in all communities it served, except that corporations could meet, and no more, a competitive rate in any city without reducing in all other cities it was serving. This law compelled the Southern California®Edison company to raise its rate in Pasadena to 5 cents, the city plant’s rate, and both the city and the corporation are now supplying current to Pasadena customers at that rate. The city, however, is steadfastly gaining on the company in the racé for Pasadena business. The city now has 9,500 customers and the company only 4,900 in Pasadena, where hitherto .the company had- a monopoly. And the people are getting current at one-third the rate they paid before public own- ership entered. The Pasadena municipal venture also has obtained fairer rates for the other cities served by the Southern California Edison company. Today the people of the other communities served by the company are paving 7 cents. This is two cents higher than the same com- pany sells current for in Pasadena, where public ownership has set thes pace, but it is a big lot less than the 15 and 1214 -cent rates that prevailed in the 20 or so towns served by the com- pany before Pasadena threw the scare into the, electric magnates. No won- der they call public ownership “So- cialisn.l,” whatever they mean by that. No wonder they call it “un-American.” It interferes with the great American right to gouge the public as long as the public is foolish enough to stand for it. In Pasadena alone public ownership to date has saved electric light con- sumers over $1,000,000 in eight years. The figures can not be quibbled about. The city, since municipal ownership came, has paid that much less for light and power than it would have paid (Continued on page 16) “&%, 2\ A S S \