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Show -28- Th© system involves three distinct processes: generation, transmission and distribution. These three processes raise distinct problems for the el- ectrical engineer; equally do they raise distinct problems for the social engineer. Hydro-electric generation concerns selection of water power sites on navigable and non-navigable waters, the capacity of plants at selected sites, the nature and range of public control over such plants. But, as we have seen, electric generation draws more heavily on coal than on water. ¦ The process of carbo-electric generation in its turn raises a new series of problems. Apart from the exertion of eminent domain and the adaptation of capacity of plants to market needs, novel questions are presented, affect- ing the economic consumption of coal, allocation of supply to different uses, and the subjection of the coal industry to new and extensive public supervision. The process of transmission involves rights of way, inter- connections, parallel lines, and the standardization of equipment. Finally, distribution introduces the sale-problems of this industry, bringing, in an accentuated form, the brood of difficulties familiar in the regulation of rates and services of utilities. Generation, transmission and distri- bution are, then, distinct parts with their special problems. But, plainly, they are parts of a whole; and legal control, while adjusted to the parts, must be co-extensive with the system as an entirety. Secretary Hoover has thus stated the practical situation which confronts lawyer and legislators: "All this means the liquidity of power over whole groups of States. At once power distribution spreads across State lines and into diverse legal jurisdictions. We are, therefore, confronted not only with problems of the coordination in the industries of their engineering, financial and owner- ship problems, but also with new legal problems in States rights and Federal relations to power distribution. "109 y^ The shallow answer to this plethora of problems is Federal control, predicated on the surface fact that we are in the field .of interstate com- merce. There is proposed a Federal Commission with authority over power, analogous to that exercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission over rail- roads* HO History, policy, and law are alike disregarded by such a remedy. The Interstate Commerce Act is not a full-blown exertion of Federal power, but the story of a long travail of empirical legislation. Even now, des- pite the absorption by Federal authority of powers heretofore exercised by the Stages, the capacity of the Interstate Commerce Commission to discharge is still in its infancy, and unless it is controlled the history of the oil industry will be repeated in the hydro-electric industry, with results far more oppressive and disastrous for people.tT James River Veto Message of Jan. 15, 1909. 16 Messages and Papers of Presidents, 715I-715U* U3 Cong. Rec, 978-979 3 and the recent debate on S, Res. 286, 68 Cong. 2d Sess., 66 Cong. Rec. 939, HOI et seq. , 2200 et seq. •J-^Report of the Secretary of Commerce (1921+) ll+. 1-^This project is embodied in the so-called Horris-Keller Super-Power Public Ownership Bill introduced into the House of Representatives at the first session of the Sixty-eighth Congress. See S. 2790, H.R* 7789, 68th Cong. 1st Sess. 65 Cong. Rec. 387)4, 3936.. See Tripp, Some Political As- pects ojf Super-Power Development (192U) 3U Stone & Webster Journ. 689. |
