Items of Interest February 5, 1916 Issue

Items of Interest

Two thirds of the steam and electric power used in the United States is controlled by less than one hundred corporations, the Stone & Webster interests of Boston standing at the top of the list of interlocking companies, according to a statement in the report of the secretary of agriculture, made in response to a resolution of the Senate and laid before that body. Eighteen corporations control over half the water-power, exclusive of steam-power, in the United States, and six corporations control more than one fourth of the water-power. Furthermore, the secretary declares, there is evident "a marked tendency toward association or community of interests, particularly between the principal holding companies, that cannot be viewed without concern."

The report will make, when printed, a massive volume in which graphic charts will tell the story of the interlocking directorates of power companies with banks and with other big corporations. The secretary points out that the concentration which his experts have discovered has taken place most rapidly in the states where power sites are largely on public lands. Revised figures of the potential waterpower resources of the country place them at the minimum of 27,943,000 horse-power, and the maximum of 53,905,000. The national forests are stated to contain 30.4 per cent of this minimum and 31.4 per cent of the maximum, while over 72 per cent of the country's total is found in the mountain and Pacific states.

In a decision of wide effect to water-power development throughout the United States, the Supreme Court holds that states possess the power to enact laws authorizing condemnation of power sites and water rights by right of eminent domain. The decision was announced by Justice Holmes in upholding the constitutionality of the Alabama water-power condemnation statutes in a case touching the improvement of Tallapoosa River. "The principal argument," he said, "is that the purpose of the condemnation is not a public one. In the organic relations of modern society it may sometimes be hard to draw the line that is supposed to limit the authority of the legislature to exercise or delegate the power of eminent domain. But to gather the streams from waste and to draw from them energy and labor without brains, and so to save mankind from toil that it can be spared, is to supply what, next to intellect, is the very foundation of all our achievements and all our welfare. If that purpose is not public we should be at a loss to say what is."

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