Business: Third Power, Second Dams

Five years after the War, a British engineer named Daniel Nicol Dunlop conceived the idea of uniting the engineers of all nations to help put the world together again. With the aid of a number of industrialists such a conference was held in London in 1924. Engineer Dunlop did not anticipate then that the third such conference would meet in Washington and that the U. S. Secretary of State would find it appropriate to urge the engineers of the world not to participate again in movements to blow the world to pieces in another great war.

Daniel N. Dunlop had been dead a year when the Troisième Conference Mondiale de l’Énergie et Deuxieme Congrès de la Commission Internationale des Grands Barrages was called to order last week. The Third World Power Conference and Second Congress on Large Dams was composed of an official committee from each of the 52 nations represented. But any of the 2,000,000,000 inhabitants of the world wanting to hear and talk about l’énergie—not only electricity, gas and waterpower, but also coal and oil—was entitled, by paying $10, to an official badge, admission to all sessions and the same privileges for his “wife or other lady.”

With such a potential guest list, preparations were on a grand scale. Congress appropriated $75,000, the Edison Electric Institute (utility trade association) put up $75,000 more, the National Electrical Manufacturers $25,000. Many a utility man contributed with his fingers crossed, because the New Deal was an enthusiastic booster for the conference. Secretary of the Interior Ickes headed the American National Committee while the Executive Committee was chairmanned by Rural Electrification Administrator Morris L. Cooke. New Deal officials soothed timid power men with promises that the meetings would be kept free of political propaganda. Nevertheless, most of the agenda might have been phrases culled from Franklin Roosevelt’s “non-political” campaign speeches: “The Public Regulation of Private Electric and Gas Utilities,” “Organization, Financing and Operation of Publicly Owned Electric & Gas Utilities,” “Planned Utilization of Water Resources,” “Rural Electrification,” etc.

New Dealers plunged heart and soul into spending the $175,000 to make the Conference a success. For six months quantities of press releases were poured out. Three auditoriums, in the Department of Labor, in the Department of Commerce and in the National Museum were equipped with “translators” whereby foreign delegates who did not understand English could, by picking up earphones, hear translations in French, German or Spanish. And finally for the grand banquet Washington’s Union Station was hired and its vast waiting room—the only available place in the capital large enough to seat 3,000 guests—converted into a dining room and rechristened the Hall of Transportation.

But things did not go off as planned. As chairman of the Conference the New Deal imported an engineer from Palo Alto, Professor Emeritus William Frederick Durand of Stanford University. That famed expert in aerodynamics made a brilliant beginning by addressing the guests, without the aid of any translators, in English, French, German and Spanish, all of which he speaks fluently. This tour de force was enjoyed by the 650 foreign delegates who showed up. These included : Germany’s Herr Doktor Julius Dorpmuller, the pudgy head of the Reich rail roads who was President of the second World Power Conference in Berlin six years ago; Japan’s beaming Professor Masawo Kamo, who has a flair for oratory in broken English accompanied by dra matic gestures; Britain’s horsey-looking Evelyn Hugh Boscawen, Viscount Falmouth, Governor of the Imperial College of Science & Technology and Alderman of London; Sir Harold Hartley, round-faced research director of the London Midland & Scottish Railway; Sir Archibald Page, smart technician who is head of the County of London Electric Supply Co.; Mrs. Gertrude Ruth Ziani de Ferranti, widow of England’s famed electrical inventor; France’s Minister of Public Works Armand Galliot who is particularly interested in an automobile that will burn anthracite coal; Utility Tycoon Gustave Mercier whose poker-faced wit made power men merry; Holland’s young Professor James Van Staveren with curly brown shovel-shaped beard; India’s Rai Dahaden Agarwal and his wife Mme Kapoorsundri Agarwal in her embroidered shawl; Lithuania’s Jurgis Ciurlys, director of machines of the Lithuanian State Rail ways; Poland’s eminent Dr. S. J. Zowski-Zwierzchowski of Warsaw Polytechnic Institute.

First trouble was that, instead of 2,000 only a half of that number appeared. Nor was the 1936 convention quite as non-political as promised.

Fires of ill-feeling were kindled when Maurice P. Davidson and Tenement Housing Commissioner Langdon W. Post, as spokesmen for New York’s utility-hating Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. and Superintendent Ezra Frederick Scattergood of the Los Angeles municipal power plant made speeches declaring that the only hope of getting reasonable utility rates was to start public plants in competition. For this breach of promise, half a dozen U. S. utility men refused to participate in the discussions. Floyd Carlisle of Niagara Hudson Power subsequently took occasion to declare that in spite of its municipal plant, Los Angeles had neither as high electric consumption nor as low rates as the average U. S. city. Hottest reply came from Britain’s John C. Dalton. associate of Sir Archibald Page, who referred to Engineer Davidson’s speech as “tirade”‘ and indignantly declared “Let us at all costs keep the politicians away from this business of ours.”

Next day Rural Electrification Administrator Cooke and Major General Edward M. Markham, U. S. Army Chief of Engineers, hastily issued an edict against “political” speeches. New Dealers continued their “non-political” power campaigns. Dr. Harlow S. Person (Rural Electrification) and K. Sewall Wingfield (PWA) criticized private utility management. William Wooden (Federal Trade Commission) declared that the gas industry was in a state of “chaos and anarchy.” Arthur Ernest Morgan (TVA) insisted that the Constitution must not stand in the way of a sound utility program. Basil Manly and Frank R. McNinch (Federal Power Commission) preached various aspects of the New Deal’s power gospel. Robert Healy (SEC) declared that private utilities should concern themselves more with “the production and sale of gas and electricity and less & less with the production and sale of securities.”

When U. S. power men went to their own defense there were hisses and applause. Foreign visitors distinguished themselves by disagreeing politely but pointedly with the New Deal’s dogma on utilities. Carl Krecke, official head of the German delegation, expressed himself against too much governmental restriction on utilities. Switzerland’s Le Maitre declared that 98% of his country’s homes were electrified, that many electric companies were owned partly by private investors and partly by local governments and the question of public ownership did not worry anyone. Viscount Falmouth, nicely neutral on the surface, explained 1 Britain’s system of allowing utilities a 7% profit and of requiring five-sixths of all profits over 7% to be used for reducing rates.

The great banquet in the railroad station ($7.50 a plate for cantaloupe. Philadelphia pepper pot, fresh salmon. Virginia lamb, ice cream and California wine) was marred by the conspicuous presence of two rows of unoccupied tables. It was enlivened by Secretary Ickes’ speech declaring that reducing electric rates was a high duty of government, by Floyd Carlisle’s point that utilities, unlike railroads, banks, farmers and many others, had not had to call on the Government for financial aid in Depression.

Yet even the great New Deal power controversy failed to make the conference sparkle like a success. Delegates dozed over technical papers. Foreigners spent a great deal of time sightseeing, golfing, attending parties at embassies and legations. Numbers of them did not even bother to appear while their own papers were being discussed. At some sessions no more than 50 auditors turned up. When the next World Power Conference was allotted to Japan in 1942, cynics added “if another is ever held.”

Grand climax of the Conference was Franklin Roosevelt’s appearance to drive home the New Deal’s power arguments in another “non-political” campaign speech. Said he:

“It was many years ago that Steinmetz observed that electricity is expensive because it is not widely used, and at the same time that it is not widely used because it is expensive. Notwithstanding reductions in rates and increase of consumption since his day . . . his observation still holds true. There is a vicious circle that we must continue to break and wise public policy will help to break it. . . .

“The Government of the United States has promoted the construction of several great reservoirs. Among other incidentals is the generation of electric power, and this may prove to be the force that breaks that vicious circle. . . . If these are not sufficient, the influence of additional meritorious projects awaiting development can always be added. . . .

“At Boulder Dam on the mighty Colorado the gates were closed months ago; a great lake has come into being behind the dam, a lake generating power,* and at this moment the powerful turbines are awaiting the relatively tiny impulse of an electric current which will flow from the touch of my hand on the button which you see beside me on the desk, to stir machinery into life, to stir it into creative activity to generate power.” This was pardonable hyperbole, for the first of Boulder Dam’s 15 generators of 115,000 h. p. each will not be ready for operation until next month. Only one little 3,500 h. p. generator to supply electricity at the damsite was ready last week. The President paused, raised his index finger and pressed the gold telegraph key that has launched countless ballyhooed enterprises.

“Boulder Dam!” he cried, “In the name of the people of the United States, to whom you, Boulder Dam, are a symbol of greater things in the future; in the honored presence of guests from many nations, I call you to life!”

A radio behind the President was ready to broadcast the sound of Colorado River water rushing from twelve 7-ft. valves, spilling 180 ft. down into the canyon below the dam. But at first the only response to his noble invocation was silence. Someone had blundered. Secretary Marvin Mclntyre made a hasty exit. Then after a short delay the radio gulped, began a mighty Brrrrrrrrr! A moment later Mr. Mclntyre reported: “Doc Smithers [White House telegrapher] flashed the dam, ‘Did you get it?’ And they came back ‘Yes. There’s water all over the place.’ ”

Smiling, the President made a dramatic exit to a double roar of water and applause.

*Four days previously the members of the Power Conference were invited behind a board fence next to a garage on the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution, there to see a solar engine which Secretary Charles G. Abbott, of the Institution, perfected to a point where it could produce power as cheaply as coal at $3 a ton. Unfortunately the engine “burnt out a bearing” an hour or two before the visitors arrived. President Gano Dunn of J. G. White Engineering Corp. pointed out to them that if the surface of the lake behind Boulder Dam were covered with such engines they would produce as much sun-power as the dam will yield waterpower. Viscount Falmouth looked at the solar engine, said to Mr. Dunn: “I don’t think any solar engine will ever work in England. Do you think, sir, you could induce Dr. Abbot to perfect a fog motor?”