SUPERPOWER ELECTRIC SYSTEM MOST EFFICIENT

"The superpower system is the only logical answer to our national power policy", said Mr. W. S. Murray, in a recent interview for the CRIMSON regarding his work as chairman of the committee appointed by the late Mr. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, to report on the advisability of connecting all sources of energy on the Eastern seaboard into one central, superpower system. Mr. Murray is known especially for his work in electrifying the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Rail-road from New York to Stamford.

"The zone of applicability for the system," Mr. Murray began, "extends from Boston to Washington and inland from the coast for 150 miles; a territory embracing 23 million people or more than one-fifth of the population of the United States. In this zone there are 36,000 miles of heavy traction railroads, 96,000 industrial plants and 550 central electrical stations producing power. Electricity is the greatest agent of power in the world today, the father of all accomplishments, moral, intellectual, and physical. It is only by harnessing this power into one central organization that we can hope to attain the efficiency needed to meet the engineering problems of America's future.

Annual Economics Great

"The system proposes to erect superpower stations, some of them aggregating 400,000 horse power, to be erected at points near coal mines, on tide water and on navigable streams, supplemented by hydro-electric stations to be constructed within the zone and all to be connected by high tension transmission lines. By 1930 if such a procedure were followed, the annual economies effected as a result of substituting a high-powered, highly efficient system for our present inefficient one would be in excess of $500,000,000 in addition to a yearly saving of 50,000,000 tons of coal.

"While the government has been instrumental in advancing the superpower survey, it is not intended to call upon the government in financing the proposed electrical constructions within the superpower zone. These will be financed by private capital and will be owned and controlled largely by existing public electric utilities with rates of power regulated by the several public service commissions in the states forming the super-power territory. We have spent during the period since the beginning of the war, billions for destruction; and now in the face of the economies to be effected by the use of a superpower system, we must lose no time in spending a large amount for construction and conservation."