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Next day Rural Electrification Administrator Cooke and Major General Edward M. Markham, U. S. Army Chief of Engineers, hastily issued an edict against "political" speeches. New Dealers continued their "non-political" power campaigns. Dr. Harlow S. Person (Rural Electrification) and K. Sewall Wingfield (PWA) criticized private utility management. William Wooden (Federal Trade Commission) declared that the gas industry was in a state of "chaos and anarchy.'' Arthur Ernest Morgan (TVA) insisted that the Constitution must not stand in the way of a sound utility program. Basil Manly and Frank R. McNinch (Federal Power Commission) preached various aspects of the New Deal's power gospel. Robert Healy (SEC) declared that private utilities should concern themselves more with "the production and sale of gas and electricity and less & less with the production and sale of securities."
When U. S. power men went to their own defense there were hisses and applause. Foreign visitors distinguished themselves by disagreeing politely but pointedly with the New Deal's dogma on utilities. Carl Krecke, official head of the German delegation, expressed himself against too much governmental restriction on utilities. Switzerland's Le Maitre declared that 98% of his country's homes were electrified, that many electric companies were owned partly by private investors and partly by local governments and the question of public ownership did not worry anyone. Viscount Falmouth, nicely neutral on the surface, explained 1 Britain's system of allowing utilities a 7% profit and of requiring five-sixths of all profits over 7% to be used for reducing rates.
The great banquet in the railroad station ($7.50 a plate for cantaloupe. Philadelphia pepper pot, fresh salmon. Virginia lamb, ice cream and California wine) was marred by the conspicuous presence of two rows of unoccupied tables. It was enlivened by Secretary Ickes' speech declaring that reducing electric rates was a high duty of government, by Floyd Carlisle's point that utilities, unlike railroads, banks, farmers and many others, had not had to call on the Government for financial aid in Depression.
Yet even the great New Deal power controversy failed to make the conference sparkle like a success. Delegates dozed over technical papers. Foreigners spent a great deal of time sightseeing, golfing, attending parties at embassies and legations. Numbers of them did not even bother to appear while their own papers were being discussed. At some sessions no more than 50 auditors turned up. When the next World Power Conference was allotted to Japan in 1942, cynics added "if another is ever held."
Grand climax of the Conference was Franklin Roosevelt's appearance to drive home the New Deal's power arguments in another "non-political" campaign speech. Said he:
"It was many years ago that Steinmetz observed that electricity is expensive because it is not widely used, and at the same time that it is not widely used because it is expensive. Notwithstanding reductions in rates and increase of consumption since his day . . . his observation still holds true. There is a vicious circle that we must continue to break and wise public policy will help to break it. . . .