instance, already developed. We want some appeal to the Federal Power Commission. That is my crude way of stating it.

The CHAIRMAN. As I understand it, you want some of this power at Muscle Shoals over in Mississippi?

Mr. WIER. We want a whole lot of it; yes, sir.

Now, I was just going to say a word. Alabama has well-developed water powers. I don't know, but I think 250,000 or 300,000 horsepower in use. Mississippi has practically none. Now, as a comparison between States of this kind, Alabama appropriated $25,000,000 in State bonds when high prices had receded and went right through with it. That is a comparison between a State that has a manufacturing industry, a development of cotton mills, etc., and one where there are no such developments.

Senator McNARY. Your development is principally in an agricultural way, and what you want to do now is to develop industrially. and to do that, you must have cheap, regulated, hydroelectric energy? Mr. WIER. Yes, sir; we must have it.

Senator MCNARY. And you believe it can be developed at Muscle Shoals, and you don't want to see it put in the hands of some individual who has a lease on it without any regulation whatsoever that might be beneficial to the people of Mississippi.

Mr. WIER. Yes, sir. That is our plea. Furthermore, we protest against the view advanced from some sources (I don't know where) that this is a national asset. You are taking something away from us when you take all of this plant over for the manufacture of nitrates for the whole country.

Our big-hearted Senator, I know, seems willing to part with it, if I may make that personal reference. He is big hearted and generous to us and to everybody. We love him, and we fell on his neck when he came over in our neck of the woods six years ago and elected him to the Senate.

Senator KENDRICK. I suggest that your Senator probably has not read the Ford contract.

Mr. WIER. I hope he will read it. give him one. I have had one for modified form.

Yes, sir; I hope he will. I will two years, and I have had the

Senator RANSDELL. Mr. Wier, has your State either potential water power or coal?

Mr. WIER. No, sir.

Senator RANSDELL. You haven't much coal, have you?

Mr. WIER. Practically no coal.

Senator RANSDELL. And practically no power?

Mr. WIER. No, sir.

Senator RANSDELL. You are like Louisiana in that respect. You are a flat State. You can not make your power by water or by coal. Is not that so to a great extent?

Mr. WIER. Yes, sir. We are absolutely dependent on the coal that comes to us from across the line.

Senator MCNARY. I think the figures show that they have 20,000 potential horsepower.

Senator NORBECK. That is just rainfall, not horsepower.

Senator MCNARY. Some one had a chart here the other day which showed a potential power of 20,000.

The CHAIRMAN. That is practically nothing.

Senator MCNARY. Yes, practically nothing.

Mr. WIER. Mississippi is set down here at 63,000 horsepower. This is the Norris report. It is embodied in that. There is 63,000 that may come ultimately in 100 years. Nobody knows whether that would be economical development or not. There have been no borings made, no tests made. We don't know whether those dams would blow out. It might be like a little company down near Montgomery about the time they were having that big meeting that Senator Heflin was talking about. The little independent dam blew out.

Senator RANSDELL. Do not your people look upon the waters of the Tennessee River as a real national asset that should be used for the benefit of the people of Mississippi, Louisiana, and all those States, that they should get their share of that national asset?

Mr. WIER. We look upon it as a national asset, with this modification, Senator, that a part of it comes to us, just like the climate of California belongs to California and we have got no right to take it away from them. It belongs to them locally. It is their local interest. We must claim that, and we can not favor this national ownership if it takes away from us that which belongs to us. The CHAIRMAN. All right. Are you through?

Mr. WIER. I would like to show you here, if I had time, which I have not, and I don't think it is necessary-a great deal has been said about the sentiment of Mississippi in that Mississippi favors the Ford bill. Two years ago it was unanimously favored, but the sentiment is changing now. I can give you the reasons for that.

The CHAIRMAN. Do they favor it now, or has Mississippi's sentiment changed?

Mr. WIER. We have not assembled the opposite sentiment, Senator. Whenever this question is brought up and considered, Senator, by intelligent, thinking people they have favored the sentiment that I have expressed here. One thing that turns Mississippi in favor of the Ford bill was this. I am just going to show you briefly now, if I can, the reasons for that. I am not making excuses, but I am giving a reason for Mississippi's attitude on this question.

First, the Manufacturers' Record came out in an editorial advocating the Ford cause in the South, as introducing manufacture. The Manufacturers' Record has reversed itself. Mr. Edmonds now has been converted to what we think is the right side of this thing. The minority report of the United States Senate-I guess that is what you would call it--in putting out the minority report, in putting out this publication, or when it was given to the press, embodied in that report this, which I don't see how it was justified. It advocated the Ford offer in the interest of cheap power for the people, and as a solution for our transportation problems we should give Muscle Shoals to Henry Ford. I saw no warrant for that, asking your pardon for making that criticism.

That was taken up by the press, and it has been repeated time and again by the Commercial Appeal and by the New Orleans TimesPicayune. I don't know the attitude of the Commercial Appeal now. In the recent few days it has been silent. But the Commercial Appeal covers north Mississippi like a blanket, and opinion on these things is shaped in the editorial room of the Commercial Appeal for north Mississippi, and I presume that largely the sentiment in south

Mississippi is shaped in the editorial rooms of the Times-Picayune. and they were both in favor of Ford. We are absolutely helpless. It took us a long time to think and get our bearings, but I think we have got our bearings now, and I am going to let Mr. Magruder, if you will permit him to, tell you about the trip to Washington as one of the 10 men appointed by our governor to come and see if we could safeguard power for Mississippi. That was our sole purpose. We are not against the Ford offer and not against anyone's offer.

The CHAIRMAN. All right; we will be glad to hear Mr. Magruder. Mr. WIER. Yes, sir. Now, one thing, gentlemen. It embarrasses me still more. I have been interested in this thing. It is my nature. While I am a merchant, most of my activities have been on the outside, and I was not satisfied with the report that they brought back. The report was individual and not official from this committee. I took it on myself to try to get a copy of that letter which said Mr. Ford would distribute power 200 miles. I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen any promise at all from Mr. Ford, or coming from Mr. Ford, or his representatives, that says that he will sell one kilowatt of power. He was going to use it all himself in building what we call chimerical or dream cities of north Alabama. I tried to get that from Mr. Magruder, our representative, on that occasion, and could not, so I wrote to the War Department, where that letter was supposed to be lodged, and may I submit this information I have got?

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Just read it.

Mr. WIER. I will read you only the conclusion. I asked the War Department, John W. Weeks, to please send me a copy of that letter that Mr. Magruder, one of Governor Whitfield's delegates, told us of, and which has been mentioned here a time or so with reference to the distribution of power. This is what he says at the conclusion. And I asked him also for an opinion as to the value of that letter, whether it would safeguard this power to us if it went through. I will read only the last paragraph of three lines.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. WIER (reading):

There is no copy of any letter from Mr. Ford on our files stating that he would transmit power 200 miles in every direction from Muscle Shoals.

Yours very truly,

JOHN W. WEEKS, Secretary of War.

Senator MONARY. What is the date of that?

Mr. WIER. The date is March 28, 1924, in response to my inquiry of March 20, 1924. He gave an opinion there as to what the value of such a letter would be if it were there.

Senator MCNARY. Why don't you put the whole letter in the record?

The CHAIRMAN. Read it all to us. It is a short letter.
Mr. WIER (reading):

Mr. F. L. WIER, Starkville, Miss.

DEAR SIR: In reply to your letter of March 20, 1924, relative to the disposal of the hydroelectric power developed at Muscle Shoals, I may state that conditions which will govern the disposition of this power must be found in the terms of any contract that may be made for the disposal of the Muscle Shoals proposition, or rules and regulations on the subject which may be prescribed by Congress. The terms of any contract will apparently be defined by Congress through legislation. Whether any statement or letters of Mr. Ford will have any weight

in determining the construction to be placed upon any contract that may be entered into will probably have to be decided by the courts and not by any executive officer of the Government.

Then follows the part that I have already read, that there is no copy of any such letter on file in the War Department.

I would like to show you gentlemen another thing if I could take the time. I could show you evidences in the papers of this striking conversion, as we call it, to our side of the case, that will safeguard, as we think, to us the power from Muscle Shoals, and that is on the part of the Manufacturers' Record, first, in January. Another thing I would like to leave with you here, not for purposes of advertisement but for vindication of what I say about the changed sentiment. We don't know how widespread it is. I do not meet any man anywhere who has any intelligence who has given the matter any thought, whether he has read the Ford offer or not, who has any different opinion about it.

Here is the Mississippi Builder, which I hope we may add to our credentials. Our chamber of commerce belongs to the State chamber of commerce centered at Jackson. This publication is put out, fostered by the State chamber of commerce, and comes from Jackson. Its conversion to our side of the case

Senator MCNARY. You mean by your side of the case, Mississippi's interest is in public ownership as against private operation? Mr. WIER. Yes, sir.

The Mississippi Builder's conversion is recorded here in the March. number. He admits it in this editorial, which I will leave with you,

if I may.

The CHAIRMAN. Suppose you hand it to the reporter and let him put it in the record, and not read it.

Mr. WIER. He gives his conversion there to our side of the case for Mississippi. In that he has followed the Manufacturers' Record editorial. They both carry editorials and articles advocating no disposal of Muscle Shoals unless it safeguards the power for Mississippi. I think I had better let Mr. Magruder speak to you. The CHAIRMAN. Just hand that article to the reporter. (The article referred to is here printed in full, as follows:)

HYDROELECTRIC POWER WILL BUILD MISSISSIPPI

The Mississippi Builder is 100 per cent for hydroelectric power that will be transmitted throughout the entire State. Its preference for the securing of this power is for the organization that will agree to give this great asset to Mississippi. It has been our position in the matter to favor the Henry Ford proposition, but we will freely acknowledge we did not study the matter as we should. We were, like many others, an admirer of his great ability to build up a great manufacturing establishment. We had not read enough and studied the matter deep enough to have given our honest opinion, nor could we have told why we were for the Ford plan more than we have stated above. But, as we said at the beginning, we want "power" for Mississippi, and we want lots of it. Taking the matter up, as we should have done at the beginning, and learned what Mr. Ford promises to do, we have about come to the conclusion that he does not promise anything more than to take over the great Muscle Shoals property in which we, the people, have spent several millions, on terms of his own liking and not considering what is strictly fair for the people of the country. He does say that he will make some fertilizer and that he will supply it to the people at his own price, he only asking an 8 per cent profit on it, which is a fair profit for the investment in manufac

turing it. He does not agree to supply power for manufacturing purposes, through transmission lines to adjoining territory, and that is the greatest need of our State. We want to see these lines radiating in all directions, we want to see each town and city supplied with it. We want to see it distributed so that the farmer can use it in many ways, even to the operating of necessary machinery which will have a great effect in labor matters, advance production and at a smaller cost, by reason of quicker and better work. None of these things does Mr. Ford and his company agree to do; for these reasons we are not for the Ford proposition.

Now a combination of southern power companies comes into the field after the Muscle Shoals project. They are all men of affairs who understand the hydroelectric power business and have built up a great southern superpower zone with over 2,000 miles of transmission wires giving to our sister States of Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia a service that is second to none in the country, not even the great system in operation at Niagara Falls, N. Y. This merger takes in nine companies: The Columbus Electric & Power Co., of Columbus, Ga.; Carolina Power & Light Co., of Raleigh, N. C.; Yadkin River Power Co., Raleigh, N. C.; Asheville Power & Light Co., Asheville, N. C.; North Carolina Electric Power Co., Asheville, N. C.; Tennessee Electric Power Co., of Chattanooga, Tenn.; Alabama Power Co., Birmingham, Ala.; Central Georgia Power Co., Macon, Ga. They agree to give Mississippi what we are asking for and write it into their contract or lease on the Government Muscle Shoals property, thereby giving us cheap fertilizer and transmission lines reaching to all parts of the State.

Now, Mississippians, these are facts. One, to take a chance on, and a poor bet, that the Henry Ford Co., will do these things if he wants to. The other companies agree and make a contract that Mississippi will have fertilizer and cheap power.

The Builder in this issue is giving you all of the facts as they stand to-day. It tells you of all matters up to the present time as they are. The Builder only wants the State to have what it is rightfully entitled to. We want to build bigger and this program will give us what we want. Read the magazine from cover to cover then make your choice. We want power and fertilizer, but don't care who furnishes them to us at the right price and in the right way.

Senator HARRISON. Mr. Chairman, Judge Magruder is one of our most prominent lawyers.

STATEMENT OF MR. W. W. MAGRUDER, CHARLESTON, MISS.

The CHAIRMAN. State your name and residence.

Mr. MAGRUDER. My name is W. W. Magruder, and my residence is Charleston, Miss. I am a lawyer and am also, I might say, an amateur farmer, farming a little bit in Mississippi and farming a

little bit down in Louisiana.

We have the credentials here to which Mr. Wier has referred, which I will leave with the secretary of your committee.

Our attitude in our community and the sentiment, that I represent, is substantially this: We are opposed to any legislation that does not come under the Federal water power act and under the supervision and control of the commission, and we are opposed to any lease or contract of any kind for the enormous natural resources of Muscle Shoals for a period greater than that limited by the water power act of 50 years. In other words, we are opposed to any contract that runs for 100 years. We believe, of course, in the protection and conservation of that great resource for the production of nitrates in time of war and fertilizer in time of peace, but the proposal of the McKenzie bill contemplates the use of only 20 per cent of the water power for fertilizer.

Senator McNARY. That is the Ford proposition?

Mr. MAGRUDER. The Ford proposition; the McKenzie bill. It provides slightly less than 20 per cent of the power for fertilizer