Lights o' London

Should U. S. housewives who fret over electric bills move to London they would find their worries considerably increased. For in Great Britain light costs an average of 13-c- per kilowatt hour, almost twice the U. S. average of 6.8-c-. Electric power, too, is much more expensive in London, costing 4-c- per hour in England; 2.16-c- here.

Yet Londoners may soon expect to see brighter and cheaper illumination struggling through the city's fogs. For into the English light-&-power industry last week entered the Utilities Power & Light Corp., a multilateral U. S. utility company headed by Harley L. Clarke of Chicago.

Utilities Power & Light Corp. serves millions of consumers in 20 states, operates power, gas and electric railway companies. It controls the potent St. Louis Gas and Coke Corp. What it did last week was to purchase the entire common stock of seven British power companies which serve more than 1,000,000 Britishers in 95 English and Scotch communities. Shrewd, diplomatic, the U. S. operators secured the Earl of Birkenhead as the head of their new British interests. Since the Earl of Birkenhead was recently (1919-22) Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Secretary of State for India, his appointment was calculated to assuage British ill-feeling against U. S. economic invasion.