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Public Utilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

C. O. Ruggles
C. O. Ruggles
Affiliation:
Professor of Public Utility Management and Regulation
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Extract

The public utilities furnish numerous and outstanding examples of government regulation and later government control if we follow the distinction between these which Professor Gras has indicated. Aside from water, the oldest of our utilities are those furnishing artificial gas, beginning in Baltimore in 1816. The early franchises or charters granted to these utilities represent, according to Professor Gras' definition, extreme forms of government regulation, because these franchises or charters actually fixed rates and prescribed the character of service to be rendered for very long periods of time, say for fifty years or double that length of time. In the case of our earliest railroad charters, granted beginning about the middle 1820's, the power to make rates was often granted to the Boards of Directors of the companies. Some States, while permitting the rates to be made by the railroads themselves, did make reservation of such power to the State if need arose for exercising it.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 20 , Issue 2: Shift from Government Regulation to Government Control of Business , April 1946, pp. 57 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1946

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References

1 27 N. J. Law 245 (1858).

2 Report No. 57, 40th Congress, 2d Session, House of Representatives, Majority Report, pp. 1-8.

3 Ibid., Minority Eeport, pp. 8-20.

4 U. S. Senate Document 1588, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, 1873-1874, Senate Beports, Vol. 3, Part 1, p. 242.

5 Iowa House Journal, 1803, p. 75.

6 Ibid, pp. 124-129.

7 Munn et al v. The People, 69 Ill. 80, 94 (1873).

8 Munn v. People of Illinois, 94 U.S. 113, 136 (1877).

9 Peik v. Chicago & Northwestern Ry. Co., 94 U.S. 164 (1877).

10 Stone v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 116 U.S. 307, 6 S. Ct. 334, 345 (1886).

11 134 U.S. 418.

12 169 U.8. 466.

13 Federal Power Commission et al v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America et al., 315 U.S. 575, 586.

14 Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U.S. 591, 602.

15 Colorado Interstate Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission and Canadian River Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 324 U.S. 581, 615.

16 Aspects of the Organization, Functions and Financing of State Public Utilities Commissions, Harvard University, Graduate School of Business Administration, Division of Research, Business Research Studies, No. 18, 1937, pp. 90.

17 “The Origin of Utility Commissions in Massachusetts,” White, Leonard D., Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XXIX (March, 1921), p. 189Google Scholar.