The Great McKee

When Grand Coulee Dam turned on the juice (TIME, March 31), it was generally said that a titanic wave of public power would soon inundate every Pacific Northwest private utility. But last week one utility laughed in the face of the spillways. Impudent little Portland Gas & Coke Company announced it would build a $1,500,000 addition to its gas by-products plant.

Boss of Portland Gas is florid, bubbling Paul Boole McKee, who comes by his enterprise naturally. His great-great-grandfather founded McKeesport, Pa.; his grandfather and father founded San Francisco banks. Paul McKee has been a dollar-a-day carpenter, a machinist's helper, a track star (Stanford), boss of Electric Bond & Share's subsidiary in Brazil.

In 1933, when New Deal schemes for public power were aborning, Bond & Share sent McKee to Oregon to run Portland Gas, Northwestern Electric (SEC later made him drop this) and Pacific Power & Light. His assignment: to recapture lost earnings, fend off public power.

McKee knew his first task was to show Portlanders that all utilitycoons were not Insulls. A good mixer, a good talker, McKee brightened many a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary, other clubs. Last year, Portland citizens raised $15,000 to help him beat Federal power at the polls.

Meanwhile, McKee never forgot that his $37,200 annual salary came from the cash register, not good will. He cut operating costs to the bone, boosted advertising to the limit. Last year his Pacific Power cleared $851,957 v. $77,105; Northwestern Electric netted $460,051 against $32,341 in 1933; Portland Gas earned $236,925 v. 1935's low of $2,333. Even so, the future of electricity in the Northwest clearly belonged to the Bonneville Power Administration. But McKee had a substitute line of goods: gas. He plugged gas for home heating, water heating, cooking and refrigeration. His gas volume last year hit a ten-year peak; his appliance salesmen outsold Bonneville power appliance salesmen. But for real profits, he needed more income from gas by-products as well (such as briquets, lampblack, benzol, road-surfacing tar). So now he is building the new by-products plant, hopes to boost by-products sales from 25% to 33-50% of gas sales. Even if the new plant does not make money, McKee last week said: "the satisfaction of doing it [in the face of Federal power], will be worth a hell of a lot."

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