◆ SpookStack

RAP eater tte MOEN et Pont ew yg eS EI INTIS IE OS i ' NEW REPUBLIC: Newman Club, a Catholic group, and » declared that “I will give the benefit of my knowledge to any group” be it white, Negro, Jewish, Catholic, Com- | ‘A Smell of Oil 7 by Robert S. Allen WP arswenr TRUMAN is quietly and effectively transforming the Federal Power Commission from a tegu- latory agency into a mouthpiece for the oil ‘and natural-gas industries. ‘His nomination of Burton N. Beh- ling as an FPC commissioner has the odor of crude petroleum. ‘Behling, who calls himself an independent, owes his selection to the combined efforts of California oilman Ed Pauley, former Gover- - not Robert S. Kerr (Kerr-McGee _ Oil Industries, Inc.)_of Oklahoma, ‘and former Michigan Senator Pren- tiss M. Brown (head of a Detroit light and power company). Beh- ling is also closely identified with the views of the commission’s chair- tan, Nelson Lee Smith, who rarely expresses opinions unfavorable to the oil and utilities interests. ' Bebling’s nomination is the latest episode in the Truman regulation- . wrecking spree which has already ousted James M. Landis as Civil Aeronautics Board chairman, and Marriner S. Eccles as head of the Federal Reserve Board. Conse- quently there has been little sur- prise in Washington. The confirmation of Behling—he would replace retiring Commis- sioner Richatd Sachse—will assure the oil interests of a sympathetic : majority in the five-man commis- sion. Behling will undoubtedly support the regulation-scuttling leg- islation the oil companies are try- ing to jam through Congress. Carefully echoing Chairman Smith and Commissioner Harring- ton Wimberly, Bebling has already gone on record as favoring the no- torious Rizley-Moore bill (the NR, February 23), which would legalize upward revision (on @ basis of the “fair-field-price” formula) of aatu- - tal-gas rates, now being held to a cost-of-production level by the gov- ernment, ; i are connected financially with a pipe: . line project several phases of which _ pretty well, and with Behling’s ‘Rizley-Moore “fair-fteld-price” The additional cost per year of such a rate boost to natural-gas con- sumets in the Colorado-to-New York area alone would be $56 mil- lion. And that isn’t all. Phillips Petroleum has a gigantic stake in the establishment of field prices as part of the rate base. Commissioner Leland Olds, who has written his own separate report on the gas in- vestigation, estimates the value of Phillips’ gas reserves at $389 mil- lion if field prices are five cents per thousand cubic feet. If the price~-|-- goes up to 10 cents, Olds points out that the value of Phillips’ prop- erty will be increased accordingly. Welcome addition. Ex-Senator Brown and former Governor Kerr are awaiting final FPC approval. Since the present commission is split two to two en the matter, and a rival pipeline is challenging the whole proceeding in the courts, it © would ‘be very nice, naturally, to have an agreeable fellow appointed to break the deadlock. Behling, for instance. © Both politically and financially, the pipeline companies are doing added help they hope to do even better. Under prevailing cost-of- production price levels, for ex- ample, the Interstate Natural Gas Company earned 15.9 percent on its invested capital from 1939 to 1946, Colorado Interstate Gas Company collected 15.1 percent. And eight other natural-gas pipeline com- panies are on the list of the top 20 big money-making US corporations. If Behling is confirmed and the formula goes through, the 1948 profits of these pipeline companies should zoom into the wild blue yonder. munist, Anarchist “or anything else.” Asked if he would talk before the Ger- man-American Bund, the Judge turned to face Tenney and brought down the house with his reply: “Yes, on my own ° terms. I'll even talk to you!” A day later the Tenney troupe folded camp and left town just as the Freedom Train pulled in. FOOTNOTE TO A PURGE » Representative Karl Stefan (R, Nebr.), as chairman of the House Ap- “propriations Subcommittee on thé State 7 - Department, was able to get access to files of last year’s notorious loyalty purge. And last week, 12 typical cases were spread on the record at hearings. Hamilton ‘Robinson, director of the State Depastment’s Office of Control, was closely questioned about his meth ods. Only the names of the suspects were withheld. A reading of the 12 reports shows that case after case was based solely on such items as membership in the Ameticans for Democratic Action, “his wife belongs to the League of Women Shoppers,” he “studied under Harold Laski,” he once said, “Henry Wallace is the outstanding symbol of American _ democracy.” Equally damning was . membership in the American Veterans’ Committee, membership in the Amer- ican Civil Liberties Union, participa- tion in the US trade-union delegation to Soviet Russia (1927), unfavorable mention by Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling, Victor Kravchenko anda Roman Cath- olic priest in Italy, association with an official of the PAC, being “too vigor- ous in her beliefs,” and so on. . ‘In fairness to the department it should be said that most of the people accused only of such silly.things were not dismissed, and that what looks on the face of it at Jeast to be a reasonably fair trial procedure is now in force within the department. The criticism leveled last year at the department's star-chamber proceedings was evidently effective.