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Show I EDITORIALS Electric Power and 't .. Boulder Dam : Secretary .Wilbur 'in offering, to sell electric power from Boulder Pom on contracts for .1.03 mills per kilowatt ? hour. Everybody on the lower river Is . - grabbing for It. Utah Is protesting be-! be-! cause It is too cheap. The power trust 'always opposed the dam. But, we have no kick about our representatives in f congress and Salt Lakers asking that jthe government: make a 2 mill charge Iper kilowatt hour at the switchboard. "j.That will enabfe the government to 'pay for the dam In full in fifty years, jand also to give Utah and other states '.a large fund to use' to develop the riv: 1er and other power propositions. "But let us discuss electric power and flight. The dam will be supposed to cost Nvlth the canal, about 165 million dollars. dol-lars. Two mills per kilowatt hour will produce a revenue to pay for the dam "jand do a lot of other things. Suppose the electric companies pay as much more for equipment and for wires to transport the elctriclty. That would make the elctriclty cost the companies 4 mills per kilowatt hour, which would include a big profit too. Bnit the Utah 'Power and Light Company charge ten :cents or 100 mills per kilowatt hour 'for light. And the .Uinta Power and 'Light Company charges 15 cents or :150 mills per kilowatt hour for. lights, iand puts on a meter and jealously guards the measurement us against .Its customers. If the charge were on the basis of the government charge, iand then double It, the cost to the con-'sumer con-'sumer in the Uinta, basin, would be 2 iand two thirds mills or a little more han a quarter of a cent per kilowatt hour. Itemember we pay 15 cents per kilowatt hour, and the balance of the state pays 10 cents per kilowatt hour, and probably the iMg. California companies com-panies could make Immense profits on 5 mills per kilowatt hour; But 5 mills Is only one half of one cent, and we are paying 15 cents 'or thirty times as much more than' the California companies com-panies could charge and make a " big profit tod. ' ' " Suppose' our home company would cut the charge 'to 5 cents per kilowatt kilo-watt hour cutihir off the 10 cents ; they would "then have a charge ten times greater than a charge that the California companies can make a big profit on at the rate they will pay for the juice from the government. Is' it any wonder that the big electric companies fought : the Boulder Dam so strenuously? |