A year ago last week Congress instructed the Federal Communications Commission to find out all there was to find out about American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Among reasons cited in support of the Congressional resolution ordering the investigation was the fact that the Bell System had hitherto been entirely overlooked as a subject for a high-powered New Deal inquiry. That omission was in itself an extraordinary tribute to the company's management, for a more likely object for Congressional scrutiny could hardly be imagined.
A. T. & T. is a virtual monopoly, accounting for nearly 14,000,000 of the country's 17,000,000 telephones. It controls practically all long-distance lines. It touches the daily lives of more U. S. citizens than any other U. S. corporation. It is the biggest private enterprise in the world, with more than $5,000,000,000 in assets, 270,000 employes, 1,000,000 security holders. State regulatory bodies have investigated its operating subsidiaries for 20 years. The Interstate Commerce Commission exercised a nominal control over the parent company's long-line operations before the Communications Commission was formed. But between these two points of public supervision lies a vast void which includes the mysteries of inter-company relations. Congress wanted to know "the effect of monopolistic control upon the reasonableness of telephone rates and charges" and why rates were not lowered during the past few "years of declining prices."
Armed with a fat $750,000 appropriation, the Communications Commission set out to find the answers. During the past year it had more than 250 accountants, lawyers and engineers in the field, ransacking files, reading letters, photostating documents, copying reports, questioning telephone officials. Commissioner Paul A. Walker, who is personally directing the investigation, accused A. T. & T. of lack of cooperation. President Walter Sherman Gifford said he was giving all the assistance he could, maintained, as he has from the start, that A. T. & T. had no skeletons to hide.
Last week, having already spent about $430,000, the Communications Commission began to reveal its findings in a series of open hearings which will continue for weeks. To give the hearings a special telephonic flavor, a luxurious courtlike hearing room in Washington's new Interstate Commerce Commission Building was equipped with an elaborate recording device which made a complete transcription of the proceedings, preserving for posterity even the whispered advice of counsel to witness.