Westerners were at the forefront of the debate over electric power development even before the construction of large, federally owned dams in the 1930s. At the heart of this debate was a conflict between public power advocates and the private utility industry over control of the environment, a struggle that was played out in the political arena. In this book, Jay Brigham describes that rivalry in the West in the years before the New Deal. Focusing on the conservative city of Los Angeles and its liberal counterpart Seattle - as well as on several small towns in the Midwest - Brigham shows how fierce battles broke out as private and public systems competed for customers and how, despite the differences between these two cities, public power ultimately triumphed in each.