The Federal Electric Railways Commission was a United States agency established by President Woodrow Wilson in June 1919. The commission was charged with investigating the financial problems of the streetcar and interurban railway industry in the United States. The commission completed its business in July 1920 after submitting a final report to the President. [1]
The commission members were:
Charlton Greenwood Ogburn served as Executive Secretary to the commission. [2]
The commission conducted public hearings from June to October 1919. [3] [4] In addition to receiving witness testimony, the commission sent questionnaires to electric railway companies, local governments, state public utility commissions and railway labor unions; and obtained reports on specialized topics. Local government experts Delos F. Wilcox and Milo R. Maltbie analyzed the data obtained and served as advisors to the commissioners. [2]
The commission submitted its final report to the President, thereby completing its business, in July 1920. [1] [5]
Among the 23 conclusions and recommendations in the final report are the following:
Delos Wilcox, who had reviewed the commission's accumulated testimony and other data, criticized the commission's final report because it did not support a recommendation for municipal ownership of the railways as an alternative solution. He had submitted an 823 page report to the commission on June 8, 1920, including his analysis and recommendations for public ownership, but this information was not included in the commission's final report to the President. [6] Later in 1920 he publicly stated that private ownership of electric railways had been a failure in the United States, while public ownership was widespread in the United Kingdom. [5]
In 1921 Wilcox published his report independently. The report, titled "Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem", stated, "My analysis of the evidence presented to the Federal Electric Railways Commission confirmed me in the opinion that no permanent solution of the electric railway problem, consistent with the public interest, is possible except in public ownership. I advised the Commission that the most important thing to be done at the present time is frankly to recognize the necessity of public ownership and operation as an ultimate policy and to concentrate eflfort upon plans for the removal of obstacles in its way and for the assurance of its success when undertaken... The final solution of the problem, as I see it, lies in the full recognition of public responsibility for local transportation and in the acceptance by the community of the primary obligation of self-help in the performance of this all-important community service." [6]
The fortunes of the interurban industry in the US declined during World War I and into the early 1920s. Many financially weak interurbans did not survive the prosperous 1920s, and most others went bankrupt during the Great Depression, along with many streetcar systems. [7] [8]
The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to the convictions of General Motors (GM) and related companies that were involved in the monopolizing of the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and subsidiaries, as well as to the allegations that the defendants conspired to own or control transit systems, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This suit created lingering suspicions that the defendants had in fact plotted to dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation.
The Interurban is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 and 1925 and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. The concept spread to countries such as Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Poland. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution. Most roads between towns and many town streets were unpaved. Transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts. The interurban provided reliable transportation, particularly in winter weather, between the town and countryside. In 1915, 15,500 miles (24,900 km) of interurban railways were operating in the United States and, for a few years, interurban railways, including the numerous manufacturers of cars and equipment, were the fifth-largest industry in the country. By 1930, most interurbans in North America were gone with a few surviving into the 1950s.
The National Electric Light Association (NELA) was a national United States trade association that included the operators of electric central power generation stations, electrical supply companies, electrical engineers, scientists, educational institutions and interested individuals. Founded in 1885 by George S. Bowen, Franklin S. Terry and Charles A. Brown, it represented the interests of private companies involved in the fledgling electric power industry that included companies like General Electric, Westinghouse and most of the country's electric companies. The NELA played a dominant role in promoting the interests and expansion of the U.S. commercial electric industry. The association's conventions became a major clearinghouse for technical papers covering the entire field of electricity and its development, with a special focus on the components needed for centralized power stations or power plants. In 1895 the Association sponsored a conference that led to the issue of the first edition of the U.S. National Electrical Code. Its rapid growth mirrored the development of electricity in the U.S. that included regional and statewide affiliations across the country and Canada. It was the forerunner of the Edison Electric Institute. Its highly aggressive battle against municipal ownership of electric production led to extensive federal hearings between 1928-35 that led to its demise. Its logo is an early depiction of Ohm's law which is "C equals E divided by R," or "the current strength in any circuit is equal to the electromotive force divided by the resistance," or the basic law of electricity. It was established in 1827 by Dr. G. S. Ohm.
Ontario Hydro, established in 1906 as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, was a publicly owned electricity utility in the Province of Ontario. It was formed to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity generated by private companies already operating at Niagara Falls, and soon developed its own generation resources by buying private generation stations and becoming a major designer and builder of new stations. As most of the readily developed hydroelectric sites became exploited, the corporation expanded into building coal-fired generation and then nuclear-powered facilities. Renamed as "Ontario Hydro" in 1974, by the 1990s it had become one of the largest, fully integrated electricity corporations in North America.
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is a nonprofit group of approximately 1,500 public and private sector member organizations that promotes and advocates for the interests of the public transportation industry in the United States.
The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA), also known as the Wheeler-Rayburn Act, was a US federal law giving the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to regulate, license, and break up electric utility holding companies. It limited holding company operations to a single state, thus subjecting them to effective state regulation. It also broke up any holding companies with more than two tiers, forcing divestitures so that each became a single integrated system serving a limited geographic area. Another purpose of the PUHCA was to keep utility holding companies engaged in regulated businesses from also engaging in unregulated businesses. The act was based on the conclusions and recommendations of the 1928-35 Federal Trade Commission investigation of the electric industry. On March 12, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt released a report he commissioned by the National Power Policy Committee. This report became the template for the PUHCA. The political battle over its passage was one of the bitterest of the New Deal, and was followed by eleven years of legal appeals by holding companies led by the Electric Bond and Share Company, which finally completed its breakup in 1961.
New York State Railways was a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad that controlled several large city streetcar and electric interurban systems in upstate New York. It included the city transit lines in Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Oneida and Rome, plus various interurban lines connecting those cities. New York State Railways also held a 50% interest in the Schenectady Railway Company, but it remained a separate independent operation. The New York Central took control of the Rochester Railway Company, the Rochester and Eastern Rapid Railway and the Rochester and Sodus Bay Railway in 1905, and the Mohawk Valley Company was formed by the railroad to manage these new acquisitions. New York State Railways was formed in 1909 when the properties controlled by the Mohawk Valley Company were merged. In 1912 it added the Rochester and Suburban Railway, the Syracuse Rapid Transit Railway, the Oneida Railway, and the Utica and Mohawk Valley Railway. The New York Central Railroad was interested in acquiring these lines in an effort to control the competition and to gain control of the lucrative electric utility companies that were behind many of these streetcar and interurban railways. Ridership across the system dropped through the 1920s as operating costs continued to rise, coupled with competition from better highways and private automobile use. New York Central sold New York State Railways in 1928 to a consortium led by investor E. L. Phillips, who was looking to gain control of the upstate utilities. Phillips sold his stake to Associated Gas & Electric in 1929, and the new owners allowed the railway bonds to default. New York State Railways entered receivership on December 30, 1929. The company emerged from receivership in 1934, and local operations were sold off to new private operators between 1938 and 1948.
The Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad, also known as the North Shore Line, was an interurban railroad that operated passenger and freight service over an 88.9-mile (143.1 km) route between the Chicago Loop and downtown Milwaukee, as well as an 8.6-mile (13.8 km) branch line between the villages of Lake Bluff and Mundelein, Illinois. The North Shore Line also provided streetcar, city bus and motor coach services along its interurban route.
The Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad (CA&E), known colloquially as the "Roarin' Elgin" or the "Great Third Rail", was an interurban railroad that operated passenger and freight service on its line between Chicago and Aurora, Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles, and Elgin, Illinois. The railroad also operated a small branch to Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Hillside and owned a branch line to Westchester.
The Indiana Railroad (IR) was the last of the typical Midwestern United States interurban lines. It was formed in 1930–31 by combining the operations of the five major interurban systems in central Indiana into one entity. The predecessor companies came under the control of Midland Utilities, owned by Samuel Insull. His plan was to modernize the profitable routes and abandon the unprofitable ones. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Insull empire collapsed and the Indiana Railroad was left with a decaying infrastructure and little hope of overcoming the growing competition of the automobile for passenger business and the truck for freight business. The IR faced bankruptcy in 1933, and Bowman Elder was designated as the receiver to run the company. Payments on bonded debt were suspended. Elder was able to keep the system virtually intact for four years, and IR operated about 600 miles (970 km) of interurban lines throughout Indiana during this period. During the late 1930s, the routes were abandoned one by one until a 1941 wreck with fatalities south of Indianapolis put an abrupt end to the Indiana Railroad's last passenger operations.
Samuel Orace Dunn was an American transportation specialist.
The New York Public Service Commission is the public utilities commission of the New York state government that regulates and oversees the electric, gas, water, and telecommunication industries in New York as part of the Department of Public Service. The department's regulations are compiled in title 16 of the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. The current chairman of the Commission and chief executive of the Department is Rory M. Christian. His term began on June 10, 2021 and runs through February 1, 2027.
Charlton Greenwood Ogburn was a lawyer who served as a public official in various capacities from 1917 through to the 1930s. He was employed as legal counsel both for government bureaucracies and labor organizations. His most widely recognized work was undertaken as counsel for the American Federation of Labor in the 1930s.
The Jamestown, Westfield and Northwestern Railroad (JW&NW) was an electric interurban railroad that served the New York towns of Jamestown and Westfield from 1914 to 1950.
The Inland Waterways Commission was created by Congress in March 1907, at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt, to investigate the transportation crisis that recently had affected nation's ability to move its produce and industrial production efficiently. The immediate crisis centered on insufficient railroad capacity developed by the private sector, and competing but neglected inland shipping, the navigation of which had been deemed under federal purview since 1824. The temporary commission lasted until the end of Roosevelt's presidency, but his conservationist progressive interest was focused more than on transportation alone. The president wanted water projects to be considered for their multiple uses and in relation to other natural resources and asked for a comprehensive plan for the improvement and control of the river systems of the United States.
Delos Franklin Wilcox was a United States expert on municipal government.
The Bureau of Corporations, predecessor to the Federal Trade Commission, was created as an investigatory agency within the Department of Commerce and Labor in the United States. The Bureau and the Department were created by Congress on February 14, 1903, during the Progressive Era.
The Electric Bond and Share Company (Ebasco) was a United States electric utility holding company organized by General Electric. It was forced to divest its holding companies and reorganize due to the passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. Following the passage of the Act, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) selected the largest of the U.S. holding companies, Ebasco to be the test case of the law before the U.S. Supreme Court. The court case known as Securities and Exchange Commission v. Electric Bond and Share company was settled in favor of the SEC on March 28, 1938. It took twenty-five years of legal action by the SEC to break up Ebasco and the other major U.S. electric holding companies until they conformed with the 1935 act. It was allowed to retain control of its foreign electric power holding company known as the American & Foreign Power Company (A&FP). After its reorganization, it became an investment company, but soon turned into a major designer and engineer of both fossil fuel and nuclear power electric generation facilities. Its involvement in the 1983 financial collapse of the Washington Public Power Supply System's five nuclear reactors led to Ebasco's demise because of the suspension of nuclear power orders and lawsuits that included numerous asbestos claims. The U.S. nuclear industry stopped all construction of new facilities following the 1979 nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, going into decline because of radiation safety concerns and major construction cost overruns.
Electric Bond Share Company v. Securities & Exchange Commission, 303 U.S. 419 (1938), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court upheld the constitutionality of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935.
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