Five years after the War, a British engineer named Daniel Nicol Dunlop conceived the idea of uniting the engineers of all nations to help put the world together again. With the aid of a number of industrialists such a conference was held in London in 1924. Engineer Dunlop did not anticipate then that the third such conference would meet in Washington and that the U. S. Secretary of State would find it appropriate to urge the engineers of the world not to participate again in movements to blow the world to pieces in another great war.
Daniel N. Dunlop had been dead a year when the Troisième Conference Mondiale de l'Énergie et Deuxieme Congrès de la Commission Internationale des Grands Barrages was called to order last week. The Third World Power Conference and Second Congress on Large Dams was composed of an official committee from each of the 52 nations represented. But any of the 2,000,000,000 inhabitants of the world wanting to hear and talk about l'énergie—not only electricity, gas and waterpower, but also coal and oil—was entitled, by paying $10, to an official badge, admission to all sessions and the same privileges for his "wife or other lady."
With such a potential guest list, preparations were on a grand scale. Congress appropriated $75,000, the Edison Electric Institute (utility trade association) put up $75,000 more, the National Electrical Manufacturers $25,000. Many a utility man contributed with his fingers crossed, because the New Deal was an enthusiastic booster for the conference. Secretary of the Interior Ickes headed the American National Committee while the Executive Committee was chairmanned by Rural Electrification Administrator Morris L. Cooke. New Deal officials soothed timid power men with promises that the meetings would be kept free of political propaganda. Nevertheless, most of the agenda might have been phrases culled from Franklin Roosevelt's "non-political" campaign speeches: "The Public Regulation of Private Electric and Gas Utilities," "Organization, Financing and Operation of Publicly Owned Electric & Gas Utilities," "Planned Utilization of Water Resources," "Rural Electrification," etc.
New Dealers plunged heart and soul into spending the $175,000 to make the Conference a success. For six months quantities of press releases were poured out. Three auditoriums, in the Department of Labor, in the Department of Commerce and in the National Museum were equipped with "translators" whereby foreign delegates who did not understand English could, by picking up earphones, hear translations in French, German or Spanish. And finally for the grand banquet Washington's Union Station was hired and its vast waiting room—the only available place in the capital large enough to seat 3,000 guests—converted into a dining room and rechristened the Hall of Transportation.