The Shortage: Its Whys, Ifs & Ickes

Into the statistical name-calling phase last week moved the next big U.S. industrial shortage: power. Aluminum, steel, other metals, transportation had gone through that phase and come out with varying degrees of priorities. Now it was power's turn. Said Harold L. Ickes, public name-caller No. 1: "There is a power shortage now and a greater one in prospect."

In the hydro-dependent Southeast, there was indeed a shortage. This week Federal Power Commission and Common wealth & Southern men were working out a rationing system, to be effective June 16. Night baseball stopped in Atlanta; many a municipality dimmed its street lights, even obsolescent stand-by plants went into operation. In Washington there was talk of sending the Normandie (which generates 120,000 kilowatts) to light Mobile. Neither a New Deal plot nor a utilitycoon's mistake, the Southern shortage was an act of God: drought.

Last week, before the Edison Electrical Institute meeting in Buffalo, OPM's William Loren Batt made the shortage sound more ominous. Estimating that 1,000,000 new kilowatts were required for expanded aluminum output alone, he recommended the extension of daylight saving time all over the nation. SEC Chairman Eicher chimed in: "Competent authorities are predicting that serious generating deficiencies will be encountered in many areas."

Up rose Charles Wetmore Kellogg, president of Edison Electric Institute and $1-a-year power man for 0PM. He declared that present U.S. generating capacity allowed for a 20% margin of safety, is adequate for all defense and civilian needs. Tired of needling by the Federal Power Commission, which has predicted a power shortage ever since 1934, he remarked: "Power shortages estimated by public bodies have generally been at a time in the future so distant that they have been eliminated by new construction before the time arrived." E.E.I, foresaw an increase of installed capacity to 48,000,000 kilowatts (cf. chart) by the end of 1942.

Next day Mr. Kellogg was given the lie direct. First to do so was Ickes. "This is no time," cried he to a press conference, "for any man to fool either himself or the people. I don't know whether Mr. Kellogg was trying to fool himself, but he certainly was misrepresenting the facts to the people." Asked whether he felt that 0PM should seek a new power expert, Ickes replied: "Why, they haven't got one now." And Mr. Kellogg? "Ha! He's worth all of the $1 a year he's being paid. . . . Papa [Washington's name for Knudsenhillman] ought to take Mr. Kellogg into the inside office and tell him a few facts he doesn't know."

Papa did just that. OPM responded to the Ickes blast by repudiating Mr. Kellogg and his optimism, said he must have spoken "in his private [non-OPM] capacity," since "this office is not in agreement. . . . On the contrary, representatives have been . . . developing a program to provide additional power. ..."

This ruckus proved little about the nation's total power supply. OPM's chief need for new capacity is for aluminum and magnesium production, whose electric furnaces consume enormous amounts of juice. A single pound of aluminum is estimated to take 10 to 12 kilowatt-hours of power.* Since aluminum production has increased by more than 1,000,000 pounds daily, 20% of the 60,000,000 kilowatt-hours increase in daily power consumption since last summer (see chart) can be roughly attributed to aluminum alone. All new aluminum plants are being built on TVA or Bonneville lines. At those two powerful power plants there is already a tightness in firm power.

Real question is whether installed capacity is adequate for the rest of U.S. defense and civilian demand. The fact that new kilowatt installation has not kept pace with demand (see chart) is not conclusive, since the industry has improved its load factor greatly in recent years (i.e., by wider interconnections of transmission lines, and better distribution of peak loads over the 24 hours of the day, the same kilowatts can produce more kilowatt-hours). But in the face of greatly increased factory requirements, regional shortages can only be avoided by careful placing and spacing of the growing factory load. Power priorities would be the next step.

Two upshots of the power stringency seemed sure last week. One meant new business for manufacturers of big individual Diesel power units, such as Fairbanks Morse and Worthington Pump. (OPM was studying surveys of such private generating capacity last week.) The other: there will probably soon be a national coordinator of power, control of which is now scattered among many State and several national (Federal Power Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, Tennessee Valley Authority, etc.) bodies. Name most loudly mentioned: Harold L. Ickes, who already controls oil (TIME, June 9) and would thus become No. 1 boss of the nation's energy.

*By the Commodity Research Bureau, whose third edition of the Commodity Yearbook, a compendium of the useful data on commodities from ale to zinc, was published last week.

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