Items related to The control of public utilities with special reference...
Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ...a public interest of this magnitude? "20 I. C. C. R. 332. =8/&iU, p. 26. REGULATION AND CONTROL OF PUBLIC UTILITIES 35 cannot declare that accumulated surplus shall not be capitalized, the adoption of such a plan rests entirely with the carriers and the volume of such surplus as a public trust fund depends entirely upon their policy and good faith." This leaves the roads to be judges in their own cases. If what has been said about their ability to capitalize in some way both the unearned increment and surplus earnings, if allowed in valuing for rates, what becomes, in fact, of the doctrine of regulation and the doctrine that the roads must render service for a just compensation? Is it not time that the economists took this matter seriously in hand, and proclaimed that the good, old legal maxim that no person is fit to be judged in his own ease is equally sound in economics, and that this matter cannot safely be left to be determined by the utilities themselves? The Burlington road in this case took the traditional ground that it was none of the business of the public where the road got its property, that it demanded its constitutional property rights, and rates that would give it a fair return on the cost of reproducing its property. In fact, evidence on any other point was put in over the protest of the road. The Commission found that in the case of this road the owners had contributed towards the enterprise $258,000,000 (stock and bonds). The company on the theory of cost of reproduction claimed a value of $530,000,000, or a surplus of $272,000,000, or somewhat more than 105 per cent. The Commission, after calling attention to the fact that the Supreme Court has never ruled on this point, says that to grant the claim would be "to guaran...
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.