At the same time, Willkie lowered rates and established a policy of ce-operating with his customers instead of continually fighting them.
A leading New Dealer, now Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, once praised him for "adoption of a low-price, high-volume basis for his industry."
Since becoming president of Commonwealth and Southern, Willkie has received the relatively small salary of $75,000 a year—just what the President gets—has accepted no bonuses, has stayed out of the stock taarket and has assumed no directorships outside his own corporation.
Commonwealth and Southern had utilities in 11 states, including Tennessee, when T.V.A. began to expand under the New Deal. As representative of more than 200,000 Commonwealth and Southern security holders, Willkie felt their interests were in jeopardy and called upon the government to buy his company's Tennessee properties.
The T.V.A. contended he was asking $60,000,000 too much. He suggested that another governmental agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, be asked to fix a fair price.
"Sensational" Offer The offer was sensational, but the public reaction was favourable. Finally, after six years of bitterness, during which Willkie charged the government with holding up, by its "threatening" attitude, the expenditure of $2,000,000,000 for plant repair and expansion by utilities companies, the two sides got together on a price.
In November, 1938, Willkie was calling the T.V.A. "one of the most cruel un-American" agencies ever devised. By August, 1939, he was attending an almost gay ceremony in Washington at which the Commonwealth and Southern's Tennessee properties were turned over to the T.V.A. for the agreed price of $78,000,000.
Willkie's friends immediately hailed him as the hero of what they called a "one-man victory over the competitive inroads of the Federal government."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.