Clarence C. Dill: The Life of a Western Politician by Kerry E. Irish

Abstract

ofAmerican photographers. That meant Indi ans were now depicted as a "lost race," as part of a nostalgic past that included thedecimated buf falo and thevanished wilderness. A final, brief epilogue argues that cowboy photographs by Montanan L.A. Huffman and sod-house scenes by Solomon Butcher along with the artwork of cowboy artistCharles M. Russell memorialized anOld West beyond thehorizon. Valuable books like thisone always provoke questions.Why closewith the1890s,forexample, when nostalgic views of a vanishingWest con tinuedwell into the twentiethcentury? Most of theauthor's illustrationscomefrom theBeinecke Library atYale University, theAmon CarterMu seum, and theAmherst College Library. Is that because these librarieshold thebest photographs of the West or because Sandweiss was trainedor worked at these institutions?Indeed, arenot the author's Yale connections everywhere apparent here?Residents ofOregon and thePacificNorth west might also ask:why so littleon theOregon Country?Near theend ofher valuable book, the author asserts that photographs have, over time, "inform [ed] and shape [d]ourmaster narrative of thenation's western past" (p. 343). Yet, how can therebe an ongoing master narrative of the region if, as the author argues, "artifacts ... can stillevoke... thepast, but always innegotiated and contingent ways" (p. 342)?Won't conclu sions about the West change as often and rap idlyas new viewers studyand interpretit? These are quibbling questions. Know this: Print theLegend isnow thebest volume avail able on the intertwined storyof photography and the AmericanWest. Smoothlywritten, invit inglypublished, and expansive in its research, Martha Sandweiss'smuch-praised studybelongs on the top shelfofbooks about the cultural his toryof theAmerican West. Clarence G Dill: The Life ofaWestern Politician By Kerry E. Irish Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2000. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 252 pages. $22.95 paper. Reviewed by Gene Tollefson Bonneville Power Administration (retired),Portland The mixed public and private power sys tem in the Northwest stands as a monu ment tomany men, none more significant than Clarence C. Dill. Over thecourseof twenty years, Dill rosefrom political obscurity to help lead a reform effort thatplaced public power on the regional agenda ? issuing a death sentence forholding compa nies on thenational agenda ? and put Franklin Delano Roosevelt intothe White House. Clarence C Dill: Life ofaWestern Politician isa balanced though incomplete account ofhow a progressive young journalist, lawyer, and former Democratic congressman upset incumbentRepublican Miles Poindexter in the 1922Senate race andwent on to serve two terms in the U.S. Senate. Public opposition to thirteenelectricutility holding companies that consolidated and soon dominated the industrydeveloped in two stages. The first sweptaway theold system,and the sec ond created thenew.Dill embraced the cause of "the pumpers," those who, in 1918, proposed con structionof a dam atGrand Coulee to store wa terfor irrigationand pump itonto thedrypla teau above. Kerry Irish presents a concise and readable account of theconsiderable political skill Dill brought to thisenterprise.Those seeking in sightsintohis role intheFederal Trade Commis Reviews 449 sion (FTC) investigationlaunched byCommerce SecretaryHerbert Hoover will be disappointed. Irish gives no account of Dill's actions or atti tudes either before or after the 1929 market crash. It isamissed opportunity. In 1923,theyear afterDill won election, the Federal Power Commission (FPC) granted li censes to thoseopposed to thepumping plan for a series of smaller, private dams. By 1932, Engi neers Public Service Company had completed Rock IslandDam, thefirstto span theColumbia River.ElectricBond and Share controlledbut did not develop four other sites. One site, Priest Rap ids,promised irrigationand aluminum produc tion,but financialmanipulations led theFPC to withdraw the licenses in 1930. A subsequent study by theArmy Corps of Engineers found a gravityplan favored by Elec tricBond and Share tobe unfeasible. It substi tuteda seriesof federaldams, includingBonne ville and Grand Coulee. President Hoover op posed reclamation effortsother than Boulder Dam and rejected 1932 legislation authorizing construction ofGrand Coulee Dam, leaving the field toFDR. FTC revelations led topassage of thePublic UtilityHolding Company Act of 1935, which abol ishednon-contiguous holding companies. Puget Sound Power and Light, WashingtonWater Power Company, Portland General Electric, and Pacific Power and Lightbecame independentby the1950s. Irishfocused his attentionon Dill's support for FDR fromhis vice presidential nomination speechat the1920 Democratic convention through the 1932campaign. Along theway, Senator Dill won the support of theNew York governor for the Grange-backed...