Word: portlanders
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Favorite shipbuilding technique of the Norsemen was to dam the water out of a fjord, build the ship on the ground, float her off by breaking the dam and letting the sea back in. Last week Todd-Bath Iron Shipbuilding Corp. (South Portland, Me.) was using this old Viking trick and Maine's nine-foot tides to speed construction on 30 $1,600,000 pre-fabricated freighters for Britain. Having no fjords, Todd-Bath steam-shoveled a basin about five feet below water. At launching time (around May 1) the incoming tide bubbling through opened gates will gently float...
...dances. Victor's square-dance album, Swing Your Partner ($3.25), had sold nearly 2,000 sets fortnight after publication. Columbia had followed with Square Dances ($2.50). Decca, which had already issued single square-dance discs, humped itself to get out albums. The strains of Hull's Victory, Portland Fancy, Buffalo Girl, Arkansaw Traveler were loud in the land...
...when New Deal schemes for public power were aborning, Bond & Share sent McKee to Oregon to run Portland Gas, Northwestern Electric (SEC later made him drop this) and Pacific Power & Light. His assignment: to recapture lost earnings, fend off public power...
McKee knew his first task was to show Portlanders that all utilitycoons were not Insulls. A good mixer, a good talker, McKee brightened many a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary, other clubs. Last year, Portland citizens raised $15,000 to help him beat Federal power at the polls...
...never forgot that his $37,200 annual salary came from the cash register, not good will. He cut operating costs to the bone, boosted advertising to the limit. Last year his Pacific Power cleared $851,957 v. $77,105; Northwestern Electric netted $460,051 against $32,341 in 1933; Portland Gas earned $236,925 v. 1935's low of $2,333. Even so, the future of electricity in the Northwest clearly belonged to the Bonneville Power Administration. But McKee had a substitute line of goods: gas. He plugged gas for home heating, water heating, cooking and refrigeration...