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Show km-w that hydro-power must he buttresseil hv .sieani-jjouer if a Constant supply of electricity elec-tricity is to be assured. And they built! accordingly. ac-cordingly. What is happening down south should make Americans think. Maybe it would be a tjood idea to stop putting' the politicians into the power business and to start returning it to regulated, private companies, which pay taxes instead of eating taxes, which run on engineering principles instead of patr mage principles, and which have given the United States the best, the cheapest and most abundant abund-ant electric service on earth. It looks as if we haven't found any workable substitute for private enterprise yet. NATURE VS MAN-MADE PROJECTS Some bureaucratic faces must be turning red down in the Southeast, where the immensely im-mensely costly Tennesses Valley Authority has gained a virtual monopoly of the power supply of large ereas by the procedure of forcing the private utilities out of business. This year's Southeastern rainfall was 50 per Cent below normal. The water level in some of TVA'S reservoirs is down 60 per cent. This means according to chairman Olds ,,i iu. Federal Power Commission, that the will be a 1,000,000 -kilowatt power shortage in tiie Southeast before the end of the year. One inevitable result of that is a demand that tens of millions more of the taxpayer's money be spent for new hydro ulants - fW TVA. Hut those plants can't be built overnight. over-night. And so it has been necessary to call upon private industry for help and quick and effective help. Seventeen private power companies, in a gigantic area running from Illinois to Texas and from Florida to Pennsylvania, Pen-nsylvania, will step up their production to the maximum to meet the need. Tt is an ironical commentary on govern-ment-in business that the country's first power pow-er shortage is occuring in a region where a .government burean is the dominant factor And it is extremely important commentary that the government, when a crisis appears, must turn to private industry to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. The private utilities, utili-ties, when they build their great systems, knew that water flow is never constant. They |