Utilities

Last week the public utility world stirred with rumor, half-news, news.

Bond & Share Family. Reports said that potent Electric Bond & Share Co., which lately voted shareholders rights to subscribe to some $66,000,000 of new stock, planned to form a billion-dollar company to hold stocks of Electric Power & Light, National Power & Light, American Power & Light, American & Foreign Power, American Superpower, American & Foreign Power, though a Bond & Share company, has little community of interest with the other rumorees, carries on only abroad. Superpower, a Bonbright & Co., child, does extraordinarily well as it is. The other three rumorees, however, are direct, lineal descendants in the Bond & Share genealogy of holding companies, sub-holding companies, operators. A move which would merge these, put one in place of three, sounded logical to many.

Eaton. Persistent through denials was the rumor that Cyrus S. Eaton, Cleveland steelman and banker, had purchased working control of United Light & Power Co., midwestern utility with $500,000,000 assets and 1928 gross earnings of $89,000,000. The report was that the Eaton purchase was from the Koppers-Mellon interests. Reports also mentioned the Insull, Bonbright and North American Power & Light interests as United Light & Power purchasers. Cyrus Eaton is called "rich as Mellon" by Clevelanders. Whenever anything really big seems to be stirring in Northern Ohio, rumors mention his name. Last week's Eaton utility rumor stirred up another, older rumor--merger of Inland Steel Co. (Chicago) and Republic Iron & Steel Co. (Youngstown), both strongly held by Cyrus Eaton.

Gary Phone. Supreme in the U. S. telephone field is Bell, subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph. Supreme among independent phone companies became the Theodore Gary interests of Kansas City, which last week bought control of Tri-State Telephone & Telegraph Co. of St. Paul, Dakota Central Telephone Co. of Aberdeen, S. Dak., and eight other companies. Tri-State operates about 165,000 telephones, earns some $1,200,000 per annum, is valued at between $30,000,000 and $40,000,000.

Morgan Family. When Commonwealth & Southern Corp. was organized recently by Bonbright & Co. with 60 million shares capitalization and Morgan backing, observers saw it as a sister to potent United Corp. which would extend the Morgan utility sway south, southwest, inland to the Great Lakes. Last week their beliefs were justified.

Commonwealth & Southern announced:

1) That it had acquired more than 90% of the common stock of Commonwealth Power Corp., Penn-Ohio Edison and Southeastern Power & Light, operating in eleven States, with total assets of over a billion dollars.

2) An offer to exchange its stock for that of Columbus Electric & Power Co. of Georgia and Alabama. (Columbus stock, on the New York curb, jumped from 60 to 120 last month.)

3) A proposed exchange offer whereby it would take over the half-billion-dollar United Light & Power Co., operating in nine middle States and Manitoba, Canada.

Rumor added that Commonwealth & Southern planned also, to trade shares with Birmingham Electric Co., of Alabama, one of the Electric Bond & Share group.

Ford. Interviewed by Electrical World, Henry Ford preached frank monopolism. "People talk about a power trust," said he. "I only wish that there actually were a power trust, a central directing organization for the development of every power source in the country." He saw no evil in exploitation of power resources for private profit. "The real profit," said he, "is not what the promoters get but what the country gets."