Concordia Case

Concordia--a pleasant name for any town. It sounded particularly pleasant to utility men last week, worried night & day as they are about where the rash of public ownership will next break out on the body politic. Missouri Public Service Co. has a power plant at Concordia, Mo. The city fathers applied for a PWA loan-grant to build a municipal plant. In a Kansas City Federal court the private power company promptly prayed for an injunction, ordering the town government to desist and refrain from its purpose.

Last week, in throwing out the municipal motion to dismiss the Missouri Public Service suit, U. S. District Judge Albert L. Reeves declared: "It must be ruled that the Administrator of Public Works has no Constitutional authority to aid the defendants [i.e. Concordia] in the construction of the project. And if it were intended by Congress to promote that character of construction work under the Industrial Recovery Act, then such purpose impinges upon Constitutional inhibitions and is invalid."

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