When New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, angered by rates he considered onerous for the city’s low-income families, proposed building a municipal power plant to establish a yardstick by which the utilities’ rates could be measured, Olds worked with La Guardia’s office on it—and exulted when, as he was to recall, “just one day before the Mayor went before the Board of Estimate for authorization,” a power company official sullenly announced substantial rate reductions. And he exulted a year later, when the same official admitted that after the reduction electric usage had increased so
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