to as the forefront of the electric and water power trust. Affiliated together in this Money Trust that Mr. Untermyer has been chasing to its lair, and likewise affiliated together in the water power and hydro-electric and public service corporation trust, are institutions with hundreds of millions of capital and billions of responsibility; institutions such as Morgan & Company, the First National, and National Bank of Commerce, and the Standard Trust Company, all of New York; Drexel & Co., Girard Trust Company and Franklin National Bank, all of Philadelphia; Bay State, Commonwealth, Old Colony and other trust companies and banks of Boston. The list as given by the Commissioner of Corporations looks like a directory of the financial elect for pretty much the entire country. And a comparison with the Untermyer analysis of Money Trust alliances strikingly enforces the impression that if there is a money trust, the water power trust is its favorite sister. They are, at least, double

cousins.

Pacific Coast, where it controls many other water-power and electric plants.

The Westinghouse interests in water power, widely scattered throughout the country and deeply involved in various municipal franchised corporations, are closely allied with the General Electric,

The Boston firm of Stone & Webster is a financial, developing and engineering concern. It is probably the real brainsheadquarters of the whole water power trust business. Sidney Z. Mitchell, long a partner in the company, is widely accounted the man who saw the possibilities in a vast concentrated control of hydro-electric enterprise, and got the financial powers to back it. He continues in affiliation with that group, and is also President of the Electric Bond & Share Company, whose stock is owned by General Electric. Thus the most intimate relationship is perfectly clear. The Stone & Webster house financed and controls the great Mississippi River power plant at Keokuk, to which allusion has already been made. It expects ultimately to develop the tremendous total of 300,000 horseThe firm also has vast power there. interests in the South and on the North

and also with the big water

power holdings of Anthony N. Brady. The Southern Power Company and the Pacific Gas & Electric Company are two of the very biggest concerns, both credited with affiliation with General Electric. James B. Duke, the tobacco multi-millionaire, comes in through the Southern Power Company, of which he is head.

It would require a volume to set forth these relationships, and when it was written nothing more would be accomplished than may be stated in a sentence:

The General Electric and Stone & Webster interests, with allies and subsidiaries, make up the water power combine. The right hand is financial power wielded through the vast Morgan banking forces; the left hand is technical and engineering knowledge, in which the Stone & Webster interests are supreme. But back of all this, in the shadows, are the political relationships of the entire group; and it is because these relationships have been tremendously powerful in Washington, that the public rights in water power are menaced by the possibility of monopoly.

Before taking up, now, the political aspects of this question, it is necessary to state just where and how government gets involved in the affair. Under the Constitution, the Federal Government controls navigation of navigable streams. It doesn't own the water in them, nor the land under them; it merely, and solely, has power to protect their navigation.

In the case of a navigable river inside. a single State, the State owns the water and the land under it. In the case of a boundary river between two States, each State owns the water to the middle of the stream and the land under that water.

tenths of a mile long, of monolithic concrete, with 199 concrete arches. The water will be raised 30 feet, and backed up stream a distance of 65 miles. The two huge locks are each 400 feet long, and 110 feet wide-the same width as those of the Panama Canal.

Not a condition has been imposed upon this company which can prevent overcapitalization, enforce reasonable prices for the power produced, or protect the public's interest, from any point of view. There is no provision for valuing the property, no stipulation that after a fixed period it shall revert to the Government of the State. In brief, the company is given a perpetual right

interested Stone & Webster, who undertook to finance his plans.

They applied to Congress, be it observed, not for the privilege of using the water, half of which belonged to Iowa and half to Illinois; not for the privilege of building a dam on the land under that water, half of which belonged to each State. They said not a word to either State, but applied at Washington for the privilege of erecting an obstruction to navigation. That was all Washington had to do with it.

Congress heard the army engineers' report, which assured it that if the dam were built in a certain way, with certain locks and works, it would not injure navigation; in fact, would improve it. These locks the promoters agreed to construct as an incident to their plans. Accordingly, Congress granted authority to obstruct navigation in this way.

Cheerfully assuming that this was all the authority it needed, the company proceeded to build its dam and locks. The works are wonderfully interesting and magnificent in extent. The dam is eight

SENATOR THEODORE E. BURTON. OF OHIO.

He says: "The possibility of the control of the business of the country through water power is more imminent than any other form of control ever attempted in the history of human endeavor."

disgusted over the situation, said recently:

"It is almost inconceivable that neither State should have interested itself in making sure that its rights would be protected. No contract or conditions were made with either State. Nobody paid any attention to the project.

"For myself, I believe either State could now enjoin the trespass on its property and the interference with its waters, and prevent the operation of the plant. It is exactly what ought to be done, and I have taken steps to call the

power interests to pay any attention to them. Congress blithely gave away-or was assumed to give away-the water and river-beds belonging to the States, and the States didn't know or care enough about their rights to interfere.

A great number of such grants have been made by Congress, on just as lax conditions, with just as much disregard for the interest of the States and the people. Recently, public attention having been focused on the value and possibilities of water power and the tendency tó monopoly, the States have been taking

notice. They want protection. Congress, however, having long been in the habit of giving away what the States owned, is not disposed to relinquish that pleasant privilege. It stands on its right to control navigation, as sufficient to justify all the rest. The courts have left a wide realm of uncertainty about exact division of powers and interests; and there matters stand.

Because nobody else was trying to protect public interests, the Federal authorities have lately been trying to stretch their authority to cover these cases. Roosevelt vetoed some dam bills because they contained no provisions for protecting the public interests. He wrote and spoke and did everything possible to command attention to the situation. Among the measures he vetoed was one providing for the construction of a dam. on the James River, in southwestern Missouri; and the story of that veto is also the story of the methods by which the power exploiters too often get what they want despite opposition.

After the bill was vetoed, an effort was made to pass it over the veto; but the necessary two-thirds of votes could not be mustered in the house. The bill was dead.

Two or three years later the very same proposition, disguised so that it could hardly be recognized, bobbed up again. Taft was president. A new corporate name had been hitched to the applicant. This time an association of local people wanted the power; just a modest, innocent little local enterprise; a perfect outrage for Congress to interfere with them!

To be sure! So Congress granted the power. The dam has been built; and today it is owned by a subordinate of the General Electric. It is just a modest little cog in the great machine that grinds out dividends for the General Electric, favorite little sister to the Money Trust!

One of the most active water_power getters in Congress has been Senator Winthrop Murray Crane of Massachusetts. He has been about the most enthusiastic introducer of bills with this end in view. Referring to a bunch of Crane bills, in one of his water power vetoes,

Roosevelt bitingly observed that "these bills either were drafted by representatives of the power companies, or are similar in effect to those thus drafted."

And he was nearer right than, perhaps, he himself knew; for Senator Crane is one of the biggest individual stockholders in the General Electric Company and was for years on its board!

The effort to get water powers and other federal wealth of the public domain turned over to the States, for the purpose of easier access by the exploiters, is being pushed right now with more vigor than ever before. Secretary of the Interior Fisher and Secretary of War Stimson, both of whom have authority over water powers, have worked together in the effort to protect the public interest, and with considerable success. They have induced the power companies on the upper Missouri in Montana, and on the Connecticut River in Connecticut, to accept grants under terms which contain rigid restrictions against over-capitalization, imitations on earnings, public right to fix rates for power, etc. But the fight is being pushed all along the line; and nowhere with so much zest as by the water power trust. It proposes to get all it can from the Nation, and when it can get no more, to have the public domain turned over to the States and then get the rest from them.

The democratic doctrine of State sovereignty affords a dangerous reason for supporting a program of cession to the States. Likewise it apparently justifies the leaving out of restrictions upon power grants. States rights democrats insist that, as the water and river-beds belong to the States, Congress has no power to impose conditions upon their use, that is for the States to look after. But if the States neglect to do it—as in the case of Illinois, Iowa and the Keokuk dam-what becomes of the poor public?

Between this view of doctrinaire advocates of State sovereignty, on one side, and the activities of such as Smoot, Austin, Crane, Olmstead and their kind, the water power trust is marching right on toward the complete control of National industry. tional industry. Only quick action will block its success.

-1

W

E sat in the dark, chilly dress circle of a New York theater one morning, a dozen of us, including a master mechanic, a few vaudeville actors, and three or four men of the press, waiting, for the first stage rehearsal of a kinetophone play. This and others of the wonderful new talking picture pieces had been tried out at the Edison laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, and had been pronounced by Mr. Edison as "a little raw." Some of the rawness had been ascribed to the size of the room and its acoustic defects.

"It will be all right when we get it in a big theater," the wizard had promised. So it was now in a big theater and here was the first stage trial of it.

Well, you may be sure that the thrill of anticipation was prickling our nerves and that we little minded the chill of the great empty auditorium.

M. R. Hutchinson of the Edison works, to the man away up in the little lantern loft; "let her go!"

The machine began to sputter and the light to flicker fitfully, after a fashion painful to weak eyes, on the white curtain above the middle of the stage. We knew that the show was about to begin.

Forth upon the screen in front of us strode Brutus and Cassius, eyeing each other with looks of scorn. The two old Romans paused. Cassius bent his manly brow and made a stately gesture. Then his lips parted and moved and out of his mouth came in clear, distinct bass tones, these words:

"That you have wronged me doth appear in this:

You have condemned and noted Lucius Pella

Of taking bribes here of the Sardians, Wherein, my letters, praying on his side, Because I knew the man, were slighted off."

To the thrill of anticipation succeeded the thrill of surprised delight. Surprised? Yes; because not only was here the vivid,