enterprises and not as promoters of political theory and economic experiment." 17

Throughout his tenure, Banks communicated frequently with Ickes, totally reversing the state of affairs under Ross, whose correspondence was infrequent and confined to periodic general summaries. The Oregon Daily Journal saw in this Ickes's determination to exercise a tight rein on the project-now that Ross no longer stood between him and the president. It noted as evidence that Banks, soon after taking office, fired or demoted the three men closest to Ross-John Fischer, Robert Beck, and Charles Carey-and that Oregon's congressmen had attempted to amend the basic law to enable the secretary of the interior to appoint the assistant administrator, chief counsel, and chief engineer.18

Events soon were to prove that Banks did not function effectively in the post. His decision in June 1939 not to promote vigorously the formation of new utility districts, while continuing to sell energy to the private utilities, incurred the wrath of district commissioners and public power enthusiasts. They wrote to Ickes that Banks was betraying the national power policy. Simultaneously, Banks reversed one of Ross's cardinal policies. He encouraged the districts to institute condemnation proceedings against the private companies. This decision precipitated a rebellion led by Beck, Carey, and Fischer, who declared that federal authorities "connected with the formulation of what might be called a national power policy had expressed themselves as being opposed to the institution of condemnation proceedings." 19

17 Oregonian, May 6, 1939.

18 "History of the BPA," vol. 1, ch. 4, p. 33; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Apr. 28, 1939; Oregon Daily Journal, May 22, 1939; E. K. Murray to Ickes, Apr. 28, 1939, Box 13, HCC&S Arch., UWL; Beck to Thompson, Mar. 29, 1940, Box 7, Beck Papers, UWL.

19 Oregonian, June 11 and 13, July 2, 1939; Cluck to Homer T. Bone, May 5, 1939, and to King, Apr. 20, 1939, Box 13, HCC&S Arch., UWL.

Banks had violated Ross's principle of fair play and peaceful negotiations. His policy decisions also undermined the morale of men who had worked loyally for Ross. Lawrence Fly, the BPA's new chief counsel, complained to Benjamin V. Cohen that "the organization as a whole needs drive." Banks was adept at firing people, but the "greater immediate need is for intelligent hiring" and a "shaking up" of divisions and procedures. Herbert S. Marks, a troubleshooter whom Ickes dispatched to the Northwest in August 1939, offered a more chilling prognosis. "While we have been at work only a few weeks," he wrote, “it has become increasingly evident to us that the condition of the organization and the attitude of the public towards it are far worse than the gloomy picture which I had been given initially, and that the prospects of remedying the situation are becoming less favorable with each day." He added that there was "strong reason to doubt the sympathy of the present Administration of the project with the policy . . . requiring that preference be given to public agencies over private utility companies." In the last analysis, Ickes had no real alternative but to effect the removal of Banks.20

Because of the waxing strength of the PUDs, any administrator would have found it increasingly difficult to remain neutral in local political conflicts. The region in 1939 was alive with debate on the future of public power, and enthusiasts like Sweetland and Neuberger, the district commissioners, and the Commonwealth Federations expected the BPA administrator to support them. Banks's policies, ironically, had found little support among private power company executives. His cautious approach in negotiating resale rates, dictated in part by Ickes's close scrutiny,

20 Lawrence Fly to Cohen, July 18, 1939, Herbert S. Marks to Cohen, Aug. 9, 1939, Marks to Ickes, Aug. 9, 1939, Box 6, Cohen File, NPPC Records, RG 48, NA.

appeared to confirm their suspicions that he would renege on the commitment to sell them energy.21

While the negotiations were in progress in the summer of 1939, Ickes announced the dismissal of Banks and the appointment of Paul J. Raver of Chicago as permanent administrator. He was relatively unknown to public power enthusiasts, and his background as a professor of engineering and chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission impelled the Wall Street Journal to predict that Raver would give a "conservative cast" to the BPA. Judson King, however, reassured Jack Cluck that the new administrator would cooperate with the public power movement in Washington and Oregon and "not sell you down the river." 22

When Raver arrived in Portland in midSeptember, he found the building program well advanced but few power contracts signed. His maiden speech, a public relations gesture, attempted to sidestep the distribution controversy and to reassure the power companies that he would not use Bonneville to destroy legitimate private enterprise. He pleaded for time to acquaint himself with grass-roots sentiment and to correct the agency's organizational problems. 23

Three weeks later, Raver received his initiation into the morass of New Deal politics. Harry Slattery of the Rural Electrification Administration accused him of indifference while the Washington Water Power Company systematically wrecked cooperatives in the eastern part of the state. This type of interagency conflict persisted throughout Raver's tenure. In January 1940, for example, Harlow S. Person re

21 Ickes to Frank A. Banks, Aug. 17, 1939, Box 3115, 1-310, pt. 1, Central Classified Files, RG 48, NA.

22 Oregonian, Aug. 22, 1939; King to Cluck, Sept. 11, 1939, Box 4, HCC&S Arch., UWL.

23 "History of the BPA," vol. 2, intro., p. 4; Oregonian, Sept. 17, 1939.

corded a strong difference of opinion with Raver over the resale rate schedule and the disposal of revenues accruing from power sales to REA-financed cooperatives. His comments left little doubt that REA would fight to retain jurisdiction over both rates and revenues. The Bureau of Reclamation, by contrast, had long been oriented to private interests; it demanded that the administrator increase the rate schedule in order to repay the government's investment as quickly as possible and return taxes to local treasuries. Ickes, meanwhile, pursued his imperialistic scheme to bring all facets of the national power policy under his jurisdiction by continually manipulating his office to deprive the BPA of its autonomy.24

Raver was not indifferent to the criticisms but deeply resented the innuendo that he was sacrificing the goals of the public power movement. Replying to Judson King, he vented his anger upon the super-guardians of public power who denied him credit while seizing upon his mistakes. "Despite all criticism to the contrary," he observed, "in my opinion the public ownership movement has been materially strengthened within the last two months." 25

The administrator's performance, indeed, was promising. Raver had shifted the agency's emphasis to give preference to power sales, savings, and regional planning for power use. He also had consummated four new contracts with the private power companies, and reemphasized the importance of the BPA as a unit in regional and national

24 Ogden, "Power Policy in the Northwest," pp. 324-326; King to Raver, Oct. 20, 1939, Box 22, King Papers, LC; Raver's address of May 1, 1940, Box 3100, 1-310, pt. 6, Central Classified Files, and "Minutes of the Meeting of Jan. 17, 1940," Box 21, NPPC Records, CF, RG 48, NA; Philip J. Funigiello, "Kilowatts for Defense: The New Deal and the Coming of the Second World War," Journal of American History 56 (1969): 614ff.

25 Raver to King, Oct. 16, 1939, Box 22, King Papers, LC; Raver to Ickes, Oct. 10, 1939, Box 6, Cohen File, NPPC Records, RG 48, NA.

planning. By the end of the year the record was to be even more impressive. It included a contract with Portland General Electric worth $500,000 in revenues and enough contracts pending to enable the agency to sell the entire output of two generators yet to be installed. Forest Grove already was being called the Tupelo of the Northwest.26

These positive accomplishments, unfortunately, went unheralded because of the controversy centering on the PUDs. Raver unwittingly fed the dispute by calling the attention of Bonneville's advisory committee to their allegedly dismal performance. He attributed their deficiencies to the absence of aggressive leadership, originating in the relatively poor caliber of the commissioners. Like his predecessor Banks, Raver fought in vain to keep the BPA from becoming entangled in the conflict between public and private power groups. His decision not to proceed beyond encouraging abler men to stand for district elections alienated many who expected him to campaign actively against the private utilities. Neuberger, for example, in an anonymous editorial in the Nation accused Raver of subverting the Bonneville legislation. To Norris's private secretary, he wrote: "It shows that I was wrong about the Bonneville Administrator, Raver, and that he is not going to help the public power movement. This is a great tragedy." Neither Lilienthal nor Roosevelt had been neutral in PUD elections, he added, "but this Bonneville Administrator is.” 27

As the controversy persisted, Raver replied vaguely that he would be guided “by the wishes of the people and Congress." Left to their own devices, the public power

26 "History of the BPA," vol. 2, intro., pp. 1ff.; Raver to King, Dec. 4, 1939, Box 22, King Papers, LC.

27 See, for example, Raver's comments in the "Minutes of the Meeting of Jan. 17, 1940," Box 21, NPPC Records, CF, RG 48, NA; [Richard L. Neuberger], Nation, Apr. 20, 1940, p. 499; Neuberger to John P. Robertson, Apr. 11, 1940, Tray 70, Box 1, Norris Papers, LC.

forces in Oregon experienced a crushing defeat in the PUD elections of May 1940. In retrospect, the factors accounting for the defeat were more complex than Raver's lack of positive assistance. The issue of municipal versus district ownership in Portland, the effective use of propaganda against the district concept, and two rate reductions shrewdly timed to go into effect shortly before the elections played a role in the victory of the private utilities. Raver, nonetheless, received the onus of blame, and from that moment his standing among public power enthusiasts in the region. diminished.28

The administrator's aloofness also sustained the efforts of those who were opting for a modification of Bonneville's administrative status. Between 1940 and 1942 Congress debated but never enacted bills governing the disposition of the project. Representing the preferences of their sponsors, the various bills proposed a comprehensive valley authority, a power agency alone, and the incorporation of the agency into the Department of the Interior. Apart from opposing the loss of autonomy to Interior-in which he was joined by Norris, Lilienthal, Leland Olds, and regional opponents of Ickes-Raver continued to declare that he would abide by the will of the people and Congress.29

Meanwhile, the European conflict overshadowed the bureaucratic divisions within the BPA, the antagonism between Raver and Ickes, and the war of attrition between PUD enthusiasts and the private power companies. As a member of the National

28 "What the Administrator Says About Bonneville: An Interview with Dr. Paul J. Raver," Electrical World 84 (1940):28; Ogden, "Power Policy in the Northwest," pp. 324-328; Oregonian, Apr. 10, May 2, 1940.

29 For the details see Herman C. Voeltz, "Genesis and Development of a Regional Power Agency in the Pacific Northwest, 1933-1943," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 53 (1962):69-74; Norris to King, Dec. 3, 1940, Tray 69, Box 3, Norris to Lilienthal, Jan. 6, 1941, and Lilienthal to Norris, Dec. 30, 1940, Box 4, Norris Papers, LC.

Power Policy and Defense Committee, Raver in 1940 asserted vital leadership in preparing Bonneville and Grand Coulee power to be the cornerstones of an integrated defense network in the Pacific Northwest. In July 1942, under the impetus of the War Production Board, Order L-94 interconnected the federal system of Bonneville and all other major electrical utility systems in the area. The advocates of public power in the Pacific Northwest regarded the interconnections as a serious threat to all prospective regional power authority legislation. And in Washington, D. C., Ickes perceived in the order evidence that the private utilities would use the emergency to subvert the national power policy. But what Roosevelt had resisted in peacetime, as scholars have noted, the war accomplished, initiating in the Pacific Northwest a new, often stormy, relationship between public and private power.30

It is not feasible to develop here all the ramifications of federal power policy in the 1930s, but certain observations based on the Bonneville story are worth recording. First, despite the persistence of internal administrative problems, the BPA was evolving into a Seattle City Lighting writ large by 1941. The resale rate structure was paying out as early as November 1940, and consumers responded immediately to the rate reductions by increasing power usage as Ross had predicted. Commercial and residential consumers in Cascade Locks, Forest Grove, Canby, and Skamania greatly increased their use of electric energy. Like

30 Voeltz, "Genesis of a Regional Power Agency," pp. 74-76; Funigiello, "Kilowatts for Defense," p. 619.

wise, the publicly owned distributing systems did succeed in proving that customers need not earn their reductions before receiving them.

The evolution of a national power policy exposed fundamental ideological differences within the New Deal, but the conflict, particularly in the Bonneville project, was primarily between those whose approach reflected more generalized principles of planning and those whose approach reflected more narrow concerns for power and resource development. The debate between the protagonists of public and private power development in the Pacific Northwest paralleled that conflict. Other sources of controversy were human and bureaucratic. Problems of interprogram conflict emerged as the work of one agency impeded or broadened the mission of another.

Furthermore, controversy among those who made national power policy often arose over emphases, priorities, strategies, and choices of time and circumstance in implementing programs. But New Dealers were men also, as one scholar has observed, and so personal competitiveness, personality clashes, and status rivalries were significant sources of conflict. In these respects, the Bonneville Power Administration dif

fered little from other power programs and other agencies in the bureaucracy of the 1930s.31

31 See the author's forthcoming study, Toward a National Power Policy: The New Deal and the Electric Utility Industry, 1933-1941 (Pittsburgh, 1973), and Charles E. Jacobs, Leadership in the New Deal (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), pp. 22-25, whose conclusions about the bureaucracy were tested and confirmed in the author's research.

CHARLES GAROFALO

An important source of untapped data

that can be applied in urban and other historical research is available at the Federal Records Center in Atlanta, Georgia. World War I Selective Service registration records, which are organized by county for each state, provide significant information whose value is enhanced by current restrictions on federal census files. In addition to the registrant's name, nativity, and age, each registration card indicates race, residence, occupation, and place of employment.1

These draft records are especially valuable in analyzing and comparing Miami's native-born and immigrant occupational structure during World War I. Not only can a distinction be made between foreignborn and native blacks in Miami, which is impossible to make in census material, but it is also possible to quantify immigrants and natives of both races and to make more refined occupational comparisons than census reports allow. Finally, these Selective Service files permit an examination of the Occupational structure of a twentieth-century city during a brief but crucial period in its history.

1 Registration cards, Dade County, Fla., 1917-18, Records of the Selective Service System (World War I), Record Group 163, Federal Records Center, Atlanta, Ga.

Between 1910 and 1920 Miami's population experienced unparalleled growth, rising from 5,471 to 29,571, an increase of over 400 percent.2 The white population grew by 500 percent, expanding from 3,213 to 20,301; the black population increased from 2,258 to 9,270, a rise of 300 percent. The black proportion of the total city popula tion in 1920, however, was actually 10 percent lower than a decade earlier. In 1910 black Miamians comprised 41.3 percent of the city's total population; in 1920 they comprised 31.3 percent.3

Besides unparalleled growth in population, another condition peculiar to Miami during this period was the presence of large numbers of black Bahamian residents. Indeed, from 1870 through 1890 most blacks on the lower east coast of Florida had come from the Bahamas in search of work. Many black migrants from islands like Eleuthera

2 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920 (Washington, D.C., 1922), vol. 3, Population, p. 195.

3 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States, 1920-32 (Washington, D.C., 1935), p. 57.

4 George E. Merrick, "Pre-Flagler Influences on the Lower Florida East Coast," Tequesta 1 (1941):

1-10.