Great American, Owen Young, founded GE, RCA, NBC, and Public Utilities Reports as well
While Owen Young was chairman of General Electric, GE, he founded and chaired the Radio Corporation of America, RCA. So he headed the leading company in two of the country's top industries, electricity and communications.
Incidentally, he also helped found the National Broadcasting Company, NBC. And, as we'll touch on below, he helped found Public Utilities Reports, the publisher of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
But Time magazine named him Man of the Year in 1930 for something else.
He engineered the Young Plan. It settled the most pressing international dispute of the 1920s, over the World War I debts of Germany. Though the Great Depression crushed that dream among so many others.
Young was a good friend of Sam Insull, the father of utility regulation. Considered the leading candidate for the 1932 presidency, as a Democrat, Young was treated gingerly by both President Herbert Hoover and future President Franklin Roosevelt.
After Roosevelt's election, Young was the obvious choice for Secretary of State. But by then, utilities and Sam Insull particularly were politically out of favor. Cordell Hull was named instead.
Back in 1912, Young was then general counsel of GE. He wanted utilities to support a committee to work with utility commissions and report regulatory actions.
The Utilities Publication Committee was started in 1914. By the next year, 1915, the committee became the board of directors of Public Utilities Reports. And the first issue of PUR was published.
We continue this rate case summary service to this day, 101 years later.
In 1929, Public Utilities Reports launched a magazine on utility regulation and policy, Public Utilities Fortnightly. Its first editor was Henry Spurr, a college classmate of Owen Young.
PUF's stated mission was to serve as an "open forum" for free expression and open exchange for all qualified points of view. This meant a lot in a time of belligerency between those who wanted to nationalize utilities and those who championed the Insull model. And it means a lot in our time too.
Public Utilities Fortnightly continues to serve as the magazine of record for commentary, opinion and debate on utility regulation and policy, as it has for the last 87 years.
Steve Mitnick, Editor-in-Chief, Public Utilities Fortnightly
E-mail me: mitnick@fortnightly.com
