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Reviews
Clarence C. Dill: The Life of a Western Politician
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By Kerry E. Irish
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Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2000. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 252 pages. $22.95 paper.
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Reviewed by Gene Tollefson
Bonneville Power Administration (retired), Portland
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The mixed public and private power system in the Northwest stands
as a monument to many men, none more significant than Clarence C.
Dill.
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1
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Over the course of twenty years, Dill rose from political obscurity to help lead a reform effort that placed public power on the regional agenda — issuing a death sentence for holding companies on the national agenda — and put Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the White House. Clarence C. Dill: Life of a Western Politician is a balanced though incomplete account of how a progressive young journalist, lawyer, and former Democratic congressman upset incumbent Republican Miles Poindexter in the 1922 Senate race and went on to serve two terms in the U.S. Senate. |
2
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Public opposition to thirteen electric utility holding companies that consolidated and soon dominated the industry developed in two stages. The first swept away the old system, and the second created the new. Dill embraced the cause of "the pumpers," those who, in 1918, proposed construction of a dam at Grand Coulee to store water for irrigation and pump it onto the dry plateau above. Kerry Irish presents a concise and readable account of the considerable political skill Dill brought to this enterprise. Those seeking insights into his role in the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation launched by Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover will be disappointed. Irish gives no account of Dill's actions or attitudes either before or after the 1929 market crash. It is a missed opportunity. |
3
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In 1923, the year after Dill won election, the Federal Power Commission (FPC) granted licenses to those opposed to the pumping plan for a series of smaller, private dams. By 1932, Engineers Public Service Company had completed Rock Island Dam, the first to span the Columbia River. Electric Bond and Share controlled but did not develop four other sites. One site, Priest Rapids, promised irrigation and aluminum production, but financial manipulations led the FPC to withdraw the licenses in 1930. |
4
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A subsequent study by the Army Corps
of Engineers found a gravity plan favored by Electric Bond and Share
to be unfeasible. It substituted a series of federal dams, including
Bonneville and Grand Coulee. President Hoover opposed reclamation
efforts other than Boulder Dam and rejected 1932 legislation authorizing
construction of Grand Coulee Dam, leaving the field to FDR.
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FTC revelations led to passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which abolished non-contiguous holding companies. Puget Sound Power and Light, Washington Water Power Company, Portland General Electric, and Pacific Power and Light became independent by the 1950s. |
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Irish focused his attention on Dill's support for FDR from his vice presidential nomination speech at the 1920 Democratic convention through the 1932 campaign. Along the way, Senator Dill won the support of the New York governor for the Grange-backed District Power Law, an initiative measure that gave counties the same right as cities to own and operate electric utilities. Its passage was a powerful signal of the coming New Deal tidal wave. Designed years earlier as an attempt to force lower prices and electrify farms, the new law had unintended consequences, leading to voter approval of Public Utility Districts in election after election. By 1950, Washington and Oregon voters had created sixty-three new public electric systems, dismantling much of the investor-owned system. |
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In a Portland campaign speech, FDR promised that "the next great hydroelectric development would be on the Columbia," to provide inexpensive power to the new utilities. Dill pressed for construction of the $450 million high dam, and Senator Charles McNary (R-Oregon) wanted a dam near Portland. The president decided to build Bonneville Dam and, initially, a smaller Grand Coulee. Charges of bid-rigging and land speculation ensued. This led to an investigation that cleared officials of charges but left a cloud over Spokane attorney Frank Funkhouser, a Dill associate. Irish writes that "there was no evidence Dill was party to Funkhouser's activities." Still, he argues that "historians are not limited to what can be proven in a court of law" and suggests that the senator "probably engaged in unethical conduct" (p. 130–1). He concludes that this, combined with Dill's marital problems, "made the thought of another political campaign unbearable in the fall of 1934" (p. 160). |
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This book will be of interest to general audiences and should be on the shelves of those readers with interest in politics and electric utilities. |
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