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needs ask who is worse off, the hard-pressed consumer with utility bills doubling in a year and still going up, or Vepco President T. Justin Moore, for example, who has nobly called on the public for austerity and sacrifice in cutting down electric use, who has cried again and again that his public utility is in dire financial straits, and who continues to receive a salary of over $90,000 a year plus generous expense allowances? Each member of Vepco’s board of directors receives an annual salary of more than $1,000 a week, and the board chairman manages to scrape by with only $116,500 annually.
The point is repeatedly made by Vepco officers and stockholders that continuing rate hikes are necessary to maintain the 16 per cent rate of return Vepco stockholders have been enjoying, otherwise they will sell their stock and new issues will not be purchased to finance its vast new construction program. But why should stockholders be maintained in such a privileged high-return bracket, at consumers’ expense, while the rest of the country is undergoing such financial hardship?
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