It also broke up any holding companies with more than two tiers, forcing divestitures so that each became a single integrated system serving a limited geographic area.

The campaign had two goals: to stigmatize public ownership on the one hand while promoting the rapid consolidation of the private sector into a few giant multi-tiered holding companies.

In June 1932, the Middle West Utility empire, one of the largest electric holding companies operating in 39 U.S. states went bankrupt, destroying the life savings of hundreds of thousands of small investors across the east and mid-west.

[3] New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was a public power supporter campaigned on the issue of reforming the electric industry and won election as the country's 32nd president.

The PUHCA was originally requested by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his Second State of the Union Address and was based on the work done by the NPPC.

It was one of several New Deal trust-busting and securities regulation initiatives that were enacted following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

On November 15, 1934, the FTC released segment 71A of its 94-volume investigation that summarized the decades-old "propaganda" war against the general public and supporters of municipal ownership of electric facilities.

[5] There was little coverage of the FTC's ongoing public hearings or monthly reports by the country's conservative news media, but that would soon change.

On November 20, 1934, the Associated Press released a detailed story about Roosevelt's National Power Policy Committee (NPPC).

[7] Roosevelt picked Securities and Exchange Commissioner and former judge Robert E. Healy, who had also been in charge of the FTC's electric investigation, to lead the NPPC review.

The article disclosed all of the administration's legislative plan two months before the NPPC or the FTC had released their reports or recommendations on the electric industry.

The FTC's investigation was still a year from being completed, with ongoing financial studies and work on the natural gas industry still incomplete.

[10] The FTC on January 28 released a 200-page report that called for the elimination of "evil practices and conditions" in the industry that its investigation had uncovered.

In its November 1934 summary, the FTC documented the "propaganda" war waged against the public power movement dating back at least to 1919.

In 1906, the National Electric Light Association's "co-operation" campaign was established in part to monitor and counter the nationwide public ownership movement.

In many cases, the industry's own press services distributed content, which the local and national newspapers then reprinted without acknowledging the source.

Representatives were being blasted by millions of letters and hundreds of thousands of telegrams demanding the defeat of the legislation, and the industry lined up allies that produced many expert witnesses during hearings.

At the same time, an army of unregistered lobbyists stormed the doors of representatives as the country's print media was bombarded with major ads and editorials opposing the legislation.

The Black Committee quickly got to the bottom of what was a fake nationwide campaign orchestrated by the electric industry to make it look like there was real public opposition to the legislation.

Other major issues from claims by senators that their phones had been wired tapped by electric companies, the FTC's report of extensive tax evasion even to bribery surfaced during the Black Committee lobbying investigation.

The scandal gave Roosevelt and other supporters of the bill the power to sway the House back into a revote, which finally passed by a vote of 222–112 on August 24.

[18] According to the Associated Press, on October 2 The Federal Trade Commission issued a complaint charging the National Electrical Manufacturers Association of New York and 16 member manufacturers with “unlawful combination, conspiracy and agreement to restrain competition.”[19] The same day, another suit against PUHCA was filed in United States District Court of Maryland for trustees of the American States Public Service Co.[20] With the President Roosevelt signing Wheeler-Rayburn bill into law on August 26, 1935, the Securities and Exchange Commission began the process of preparing for carrying out the two main parts (Title I & II) of the law now called the Public Utilities Holding Company Act of 1935.

An example of the dramatic impacts the law had was documented with the Columbia Gas & Electric Corporation case where the capital represented by the common stock was reduced from $194,349,005.62 to $12,304,282.00 a total of $182,044,723.62 by the elimination of the corrupting holding company structures.

The result of the provision was the divestiture of utility-owned electric streetcar companies, which were then acquired by various parties and very often dismantled to be replaced by buses or trackless trolleys.