Bonneville's Bananaman

In the gorges of the Skagit River, high in the mountains above Seattle, is a grove of palms and banana plants. They were grown there by James Delmage Ross, superintendent of Seattle's power system, after someone told him it couldn't be done. Almost as surprising as a banana plant in the State of Washington is a Republican in the high councils of the New Deal, but such is Mr. Ross. A utility expert who expressed hearty "disapproval of Franklin Roosevelt's early ideas on power distribution, he nonetheless became Franklin Roosevelt's firm friend, was appointed by him two years ago to the Securities & Exchange Commission. Last week Republican Ross resigned from the SEC to take a bigger job offered by Democrat Roosevelt--the administration of the Federal Government's big Bonneville hydroelectric project in Oregon.

"Jaydee" Ross is now gruff, bluff and 65.

He was born of poor parents in Canada, forestalled tuberculosis by hiking from Ontario to Alaska. Settling in Seattle, he got into Seattle's municipal power business at the beginning, has been there ever since so effectively that Seattle has lighting superior in quality and in cheapness to many bigger U. S. cities. Municipal control of power-is something of a fetish in Seattle and City Light Superintendent Ross became so idolized that when Mayor Frank Edwards fired him, the voters promptly fired Mayor Edwards by recall.

When Franklin Roosevelt announced a program of increased power production to lower power rates, Utilityman Ross stormed up & down the Northwest denouncing this as faulty theory, declaring that the cost of power distribution rather than production is what makes rates high. Liking the forthright Ross manner, President Roosevelt put him on the SEC to take care of utility restriction & registration. As administrator of Bonneville. he will have charge both of producing and of marketing power.

Commissioner Ross's resignation left the five-man SEC with two vacancies. To old-line conservatives this was a matter of real concern.* As long as James M. Landis was chairman, the SEC was in the hands of men more or less conciliatory to Wall Street and crusaders were in the minority. This has long been a sore point with ardent New Dealers and last week it was sorer than ever. Forced to resign after disagreement with associates, Kemper Simpson, SEC economic adviser since 1934, furiously ticked off the SEC for relaxing registration requirements, blamed the severity of the current market crash on its laxity.

Yet at the moment Economist Simpson chose to complain, such laxity, if it really existed, seemed definitely gone. A month ago Chairman Landis was succeeded by William O. Douglas, who admits he is a reformer (TIME, Oct. 11). With Landis and Ross gone, Chairman Douglas and Commissioner Healy, who shares his views, now dominate, and the old school is represented solely by Commissioner Mathews. If two more crusaders are appointed he will be in a very small minority. The change appeared in two other events within the last two weeks:

P:Suspending Thomas F. Gagen, broker, from the Boston Exchange on charges of stock manipulation, the SEC cracked out a warning to customers' men that their activities "cannot long be ignored." Brokers shivered as they recalled that Chairman Douglas once declared that customers' men had "unestablished value." P: SEC acted on an application of International Paper & Power Co. for a rehearing on a phase of its recapitalization plan under which, when Landis was chairman, it had been granted exemption from the provisions of the Public Utility Act of 1935. Denying the application, the commission last week announced that it regretted that the exemption ever had been granted.

*Also a matter of concern to conservatives this week was the refusal of the U. S. Supreme Court to review a lower court decision sustaining the SEC, whose power to subpoena telegrams had been challenged by three Florida concerns--Ryan Florida Corp., Income Royalties Co. and Florida Tex Oil Co.

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