Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
River basins in North and South Carolina, 2013, showing selected sites in the Saluda-Broad, Catawba-
Wateree, and Santee-Cooper River basins (map by Amber R. Ignatius)
James B. Duke did not wait for markets to emerge to justify massive capital investments
in hydropower; he cultivated industrial consumers. Duke's company, and other companies
that followed, had never envisioned providing service to rural or residential customers. In-
stead, as Duke historian Robert Durden has demonstrated, Duke invested directly in new
textile mills or subsidized the electrical conversion of old mills to use electric equipment
to ensure a market for his company's electricity and to attract New England's manufac-
turers to the Southeast. Industrial sociologist Harriet Herring, one of Vance's Chapel Hill
colleagues, concluded that Duke Power “became a veritable Chamber of Commerce in
advertising the advantages of the area for manufacturing.” Duke Power's influence was
“more positive and concrete than any Chamber of Commerce,” in Herring's opinion, since
the company could “offer attractive inducements to potential customers” in the days be-
fore public utility commissions regulated utility rates and service areas. In another example
of Duke's influence, one company subsidiary, the Mill Power Supply Company, provided
low-interest loans and ample credit to mill owners who abandoned the on-site steam plants
they originally used to generate energy and converted to using energy produced and de-
