THE CABINET: Hoover and Super-Power

Hoover and “SuperPower”

Engineers have for years been urging the establishment of a comprehensive “superpower” system for the U. S. Detailed plans for such a system have been drawn by Frank G. Baum, hydro-electrical expert, and made available to the industry through the cooperation of General Guy E. Tripp, Chairman of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co., and other leaders of big-business. The American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the National Electric Light Association have devoted programs to it. A Federal super-power commission appointed in 1918 made an extensive survey of needs and costs. If the engineers could have their way, the completion of the system would be a matter of a few years.

But State and Federal cooperation and legislation is essential. It remained for Herbert C. Hoover, 90 h.p. Commerce Secretary, to take the first practical steps toward this end. With the approval of President Coolidge, he last week called a conference of State Public Service Commission officials at the Engineering Societies Building, Manhattan. From New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire they came; they listened to Mr. Hoover explain how an annual saving of over $500,000,000 and 50,000,000 tons of coal in the eleven New England and Middle Atlantic states alone could be made on an investment of $1,250,000,000.

” This conference is not conceived as more government in business,” explained Mr. Hoover. He does not advocate Federal super-regulation of interstate movement of power, but believes the solution will be found in coordinated state regulation with the assistance of the Federal Government. But the states must meet each other halfway. Maine has a law prohibiting the transmission of electric current across its borders, passed to retain Maine’s waterpower for her own benefit. The people of Maine will not act the ” dog in the manger,” however, if a general plan is adopted, said William E. Guerney, President of the State (of Maine) Public Service Commission. Other state officials approved the plan and promised to help, though unable to speak, of course, for their legislatures. Obstacles caused by state boundary lines may have to be removed by treaties or compacts between states. Another conference will be held in six weeks to which representatives of public utilities companies and of chambers of commerce and other civic bodies will be invited. Hoover will formulate the program.

The super-power plan, as ” dramatized ” by the engineers, calls for the construction of networks of great power highways east of the Mississippi and west of the Rockies, linked by several transcontinental lines, connecting central storage stations. These lines would carry currents of 220,000 volts (some Pacific Coast lines are already doing this) by methods of high-voltage transmission evolved by the General Electric Co. (TIME, June 18). Local low-voltage systems would connect with the main trunks, distributing electricity for industrial, commercial and domestic purposes throughout the nation, even to remote rural districts.

The bulk of the current would be produced by waterpower from such projects, as the Roosevelt (Ariz.) and Keokuk (la.) dams, supplanting the steam-power system which now furnishes five-sixths of the nation’s horse power at tremendous waste of coal, oil, human labor and rapidly replaced machinery. There is available in North America 65,000,000 h.p. from water alone, which would be supplanted by steam power only in extreme drought. Hoover’s plan, while looking to large future development, contemplates at first only the interconnection of existing utility systems and common action in the erection of new production units. In the Northeastern States, the Federal Commission’s plan would electrify 19,000 out of the 36,000 miles of railroad in the district at a saving of $84,000,000 a year to the railroads. Savings to lighting and transit companies and manufacturers would be even greater.