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Show EDITORIAL UNLIMITED POWER. ; Upholding a decision of the Utah courts, the supreme court of the United States has decided that i the public utilities commission of this state has the right to annul contracts, even when they have 1 been made by both parties in good t faith, in readjusting and establish-; establish-; ing rates for all public service 1 companies. This decision was the J result of an appeal made by the Union Portland Cement company, 'the Ogden Portland Cement com-pany com-pany and the Utah-Idaho Central 1 Railroad company from a decision in the Utah supreme court regarding regard-ing the power of the public utili-; utili-; ties commission when such con ' tracts exist.' Thus is a tremendous power I vested in the public utilities com-( com-( mission, which power has been delegated to them by the people through the legislature and continued con-tinued by the courts So long as a public utilities commission functions as the legis-i legis-i lative act creating it contemplates, 1 that is, to see that the public in- terest is served by establishing fair and equitable rates, there is no danger. On the other hand, if a commission grants exorbitant and unreasonable rates at the behest be-hest of monopoly the situation is extremely dangerous and grave for the people. The people of Utah have not forgotten that about one year ago our public utilities commission granted increases m power rates ranging from 60 to 250 per cen-, regardless of the fact that business busi-ness ;md industry was struggling to get back to normalcy. It is true that due to a vigorous campaign conducted by The Standard-Examiner and in response to an outraged out-raged public sentiment, a small reduction re-duction was recently made giving relief to the smaller users of power pow-er and to the farmers usiDg power for irrigatibn purposes. But the fact remains that our industries are still struggling under un-der the heavy burdens of increased in-creased rates granted to the power company. Unless the people are served by a commission which will base rates upon a fair valuation to yield a reasonable return, it would be better to abolish the public utilities util-ities act and give back to the people peo-ple the control of the entire situation situa-tion and the power to fix rates through direct legislation. |