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Show $700,000,00 To Be Spent During 1931, according to official offi-cial estimates, electric , light and power companies will spend about 3700,000,000 for new construction, and extension and betterment o! facilities. While this is somewhat below the 1930 figure, few other j industries will be able to show oudgets of equal magnitude. At the end of 1931 the electric industry will have spent, in four successive years, the gigantic total of S3, 256,000.000. The effect this has had on maintaining wage scales, living stanaards and industrial indus-trial progress is almost incalcuable. Last year was generally considered consider-ed to be one of tne worst in several sev-eral decades, yet the industry spjnt s.'ioO,000,000 for new const: con-st: uction and improvements alone. In short, the electric industry ia stable spokes in our industrial wheel. It has gone ahead, in the faj of many obstacles, with its work of providing the public with one of iip most important and better and cheaper service. it las made decentralization of industry in-dustry possible by giving thousands f semi-rural communities the same standards or electric service provided in large cities, thus putting put-ting many smaii towns on the industrial map. it has made the American home tlie most efficient and comfortable in the world. It has given American workers a greater productivity, and hence a greater earning power, than the workers of any otner country. America has been called a utility built country. The facts ani figures snow that that is not so exaggerated as It might seem en first glance. |