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Show -25- and social consequences in so short a time. It is not our province, nor within our competence, to tell the engineering details which are in prooess of affecting so drastically our social life. But we must take account of these engineering factsj legal inventiveness cannot operate in vacuo. It must deal with the realities of a world transformed by engineering science. Thus far three stages mark the work of the engineer. At first a small independent plant, generating electricity mainly from coal, was the center of power for a limited local market* Soon progress was made in the art of transmitting energy at a small cost over longer distances. Plants multiplied freely. They were haphazard in their conception and frequently wasteful through needless duplication of equipment. The effort of each plant to ex- tend its area of distribution led to cut-throat competition and reckless ex- pansion. This gave rise to the familiar devices for division of territory among competitors. Often this division was wholly arbitrary and paid no heed to the economics of a situation.96 Gradually competitors resorted to consolidation in its various forms.96a These tendencies, feverishly stimu- lated by the war,97 bring us t o the second stage of interconnection. By this method the surplus energy of an independent generating station may b© tapped for use beyond the distributing area of such a station. The exten- sion of this system, known as the superpower movement, was proposed as the means of developing the necessary power resources of the country.98 So 96pennsylvania, fpr example, adopted a system of granting corporate charters, with the approval of the Public Service Commission, to an elec- tric company with the exclusive right of distributing electric current to customers within a limited territory. Some of the companies acquired ter- ritory separated from each other by the territory that had been assigned to competing companies. In order to permit interconnections transmission lines had to be built across this intervening territory. A system of "strip charters" was thereby introduced, whereby the company was permitted to operate only over a strip of ground 100 feet wide, thus permitting trans- mission but denying any sale of the current en route. This practice, it is urged, has obstructed the pooling of demands for current, the development of generating stations to their full capacity, and is, in general, an un- economical mode of meeting consumers1 needs. See Cooke, Report of the Gisuat Power Survey Board to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania (1925) pp« 23-"25» 96astewart, Consolidation in the Electric Utility Industry (1925) 108 Am. Acad. Pol. Sci. Ann. llj9. 97Cooke,- op. oit» supra note 95* P» 23* 98ln 1920 the Department of the Interior at the instance of the engin- eering profession undertook an exhaustive study of the possibilities of a coordinated development of electrical energy in the Northeastern States* In 1921 a report* by W» S# Murray and others, containing an extensive sur- vey of this region and recommending a plan for its development, was publish- ed. (Superpower System for the Region between Boston and Washington, Depfe* of Interior, Prof. Paper 123). I» 1923 Secretary Hoover held a conference of the Public Utilities Commissions of the eleven northeastern States upon the superpower question. A northeastern Superpower Committee was formed, consisting of members of these Commissions and members appointed by the United States Geological Survey, The Federal Power Commission* and the |