It’s almost hard in 1988 to imagine postwar Chicago. A spirit of optimism pervaded the city. After all, Chicagoans were among the troops who defeated Hitler and saved the free world. That optimism even extended to the baseball diamond. Cubs fans knew their team could rebound from a disappointing third-place finish in 1946 to recapture the National League pennant that was theirs only two years earlier.
The independent was Robert Merriam, of Hyde Park’s 5th Ward, son of former alderman and mayoral candidate Charles Merriam. How upstanding was he? Alderman Paddy Bauler once told him there were only two honest aldermen in the city. One was Merriam. The other was Bauler himself, who unlike the “fakers” in the City Council claimed the integrity to admit to being a crook.
Just as Chicago in the late 1980s is trying to cope with the issue of how to distribute electricity as efficiently and cheaply as possible, so was the city in the late 1940s. There are parallels. Then as now, Chicagoans complained of the highest electric bills in the midwest and some of the highest bills in the country. Then as now, the city was in a state of political turmoil, with independent-minded aldermen battling machine stalwarts.
L.P. Cookingham, city manager of Kansas City, recommended that Chicago hire a firm of engineers experienced in rate and franchise matters and be guided by their findings. Cleveland, Cincinnati, and New York had made such studies, he pointed out. “In each case consulting engineers were employed to gather the information and make recommendations on the franchise provisions. . . . Such a study may cost a lot of money but it may save the rate payers of your city millions upon millions of dollars in the next 25 to 50 years. Therefore any sum you can spend on the survey would be well spent and should react to the benefit of the rate payers.”
Advocates of municipal utility ownership had barrels of statistics on their side. John Bauer pointed out that private companies in other large American cities cost nearly twice as much to operate as municipally owned ones. Even Turney in his report would predict that a public system could save Chicago consumers $5 million per year.
Edison representatives explained away the lower electricity rates in other cities: Cincinnati had lower wages and taxes; Washington, D.C., had lower taxes; Los Angeles had low-cost power from Boulder Dam, and low taxes due to municipal ownership; Buffalo had cheap hydroelectric power; Milwaukee had lower wages; Detroit had lower taxes; and so on.
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Merriam wondered why the hearings couldn’t have been put off until the Turney study was released, so it could be available to the Utilities Committee and potential witnesses. As it was, the aldermen were “cold,” and advocates of public ownership lacked information they needed to organize their case.
