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The Hetch Hetchy fight was greatly influenced by the nascent battle over who would provide the public with electrical power. Would it be public power or a private power company? Would it be San Francisco or the newly-formed (1905) Pacific Gas and Electric Company? For some, such as Senator George Norris of Nebraska, the heart of the Hetch Hetchy fight was to keep power in the public's hands. Therefore, the Raker Act granted San Francisco the right to build and operate electrical generating stations, but specifically prohibiting the city from selling that power to a privately owned company. In 1925, however, San Francisco violated the Raker Act by contracting with PG&E to purchase for $2 million per year all of the power generated by the Hetch Hetchy system. Most of this chapter chronicles the long fight between San Francisco and the federal government. It particularly focuses on Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes' determination to bring public power to San Francsico, rejected eight times in public bond issues. Although Ickes view was sustained by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling (US vs. City and County of San Francisco, 1940), by the late 1940s he had lost his battle. Today, the people of San Franciscan still pay the PG&E for their electricity. Congress expected the Hetch Hetchy system to provide the city with municipal water and power. Only 50 percent of that goal was realized. Today, most of the Hetch Hetchy system electricity is sold to the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts.

In early 1913, the issue was thrown into the halls of Congress for a final decision. At the same time, a new administration came into power with President Woodrow Wilson appointing Franklin Lane as his secretary of the interior. Nothing could have been more important, for Lane had been San Francisco City Attorney, and strongly favored the city's case. Hearing took place in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but with Lane in office and a strong San Francisco lobbying team, it was clear who would be the victor. The valley defenders fought furiously, but they were out numbered, out maneuvered, and out staffed. The Raker Act, granting San Francisco the valley, won approval in the House, 183 to 43. After six days of debate in the Senate, the Raker Act passed at 12 o'clock A.M on December 6, with 43 yeas, 25 nays, and 27 absentees. President Wilson signed the Raker Act on December 19, 1913. San Francisco's long political struggle was over. It was a devastating loss for the preservation interests, but as John Muir stated, “the battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong”.

The stock narrative of the Industrial Revolution (ca. 1760–late 1800s) is one of moral and economic progress. Indeed, economic progress is cast as moral progress. The story tends to go something like this: inventors, economists, and statesmen in Western Europe dreamed up a new industrialized world. Fueled by the optimism and scientific know-how of the Enlightenment, a series of heroic men—James Watt, Adam Smith, William Huskisson, and so on— fought back against the stultifying effects of regulated economies, irrational laws and customs, and a traditional guild structure that quashed innovation. By the mid-nineteenth century, they had managed to implement a laissez-faire (“free”) economy that ran on new machines and was centered around modern factories and an urban working class. It was a long and difficult process, but this revolution eventually brought Europeans to a new plateau of civilization. In the end, Europeans lived in a new world based on wage labor, easy mobility, and the consumption of sparkling products. Europe had rescued itself from the pre-industrial misery that had hampered humankind since the dawn of time. Cheap and abundant fossil fuel powered the trains and other steam engines that drove humankind into this brave new future. Later, around the time that Europeans decided that colonial slavery wasn’t such a good idea, they exported this revolution to other parts of the world, so that everyone could participate in freedom and industrialized modernity. They did this, in part, by “opening up markets” in primitive agrarian societies. The net result has been increased human happiness, wealth, and productivity—the attainment of our true potential as a species! Sadly, this saccharine story still sweetens our societal self-image. Indeed, it is deeply ingrained in the collective identity of the industrialized world. The narrative has gotten more complex but remains a la base a triumphalist story.