Schoolmarms formerly used yardsticks both for measuring and for smacking. That the New Deal is similarly using its power yardstick was last week apparent in Texas and Tennessee.
In Tennessee, Commonwealth & Southern Corp. is trying to escape TVA's punishing competition by selling out. Commonwealth's President Wendell Willkie wants to sell his integrated properties in one batch; TVA Director David Lilienthal wants to buy them piecemeal, using the threat of municipal competition with lower power rates to get his way. Thus the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga offered to buy the Chattanooga property of Mr. Willkie's Tennessee Electric Power Co., threatened...