The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-06-26
Muscle Shoals Again
From the Detroit Journal.

From the Detroit Journal.
 The south does not simply want the water power of Muscle Shoals to be developed. It wants Henry Ford to develop that power.
 There is very sound and practical reason why.
 Water power awaits exploitation in scores of southern streams. The Holston, Powell, Clinch and French Broad rivers of the upper Tennes- see drainage would every one of them be pro ducing energy if they were in the north. Near ly the whole length of the Coosa river in Ala bama is capable of turning the wheels of en- ergy. The Tallapoosa and the Cahaba are rivers that must make the water power people dream of vast enterprises every sight they catch of them. The Cumberland, the Ken lucky, rivers in the Carolinas and in Arkansas have. all of them the character. of streams that are harnessed in New England, and have been for years
 Ventures have been made in this power de- velopment in the south some of them bold and striking. But it has only been scratch ing of the surface soil of possibilities.
 Several things stand in the way. One iz that the financing has almost wholly to be done in the north and by people who never set eyes upon the actual properties. Another is that the industries to use the power must be at tracted out of the north.
 There is wealth, wealth of slow accumu- lation, in the south The small town banks boast of their great deposits But these banks cater to merchants and to farmers, and to few others They have not developed the indus trial sense. The same thing is true of people with capital other than bankers. They will sink money in Texas oil well rather than invest in the most conservative kind of sn industrial enterprise in their own comnlu..i- ties.
 The southern peoples imagination has been fired by Henry Ford. To them he is TO- mantle figure. They think of him as they thought of Lee and Forrest and Stonewall Jackson 60 years ago. The practical business men of large caliber in the section, the big ger political captains, the northern engineers who have been struggling with long distane financing, the economists of the southern uni versities-these all that if Ford is given control of Muscle Shoals the business spirit of the section will be transformed The south ern bankers who, in many places, are mere gobblers of land and shavers of notes, will be cured of their backwardness. Private cap itaI will be more enterprisng and patriotic. It would mean no les sthan the revolution of seven or eight states. And with the work proceeding at Muscle Shoals work would begin feverishy innumerable other places that invite water power development.
 It is possibly true that Ford is driving bar gain that will give him tremendous advan- tage. It is doubtless true as well that others will attempt to use his contract with the gov ernment as precedent for giving the rights of the people the worst of it. But to dwell upon these phases is to be dull, unimaginative, without vision For with Ford once at the labor of finishing the Wilson dam the south will become another south-enterprising, in- dustrious, looking happily to the future in- stead of glorifying the past. Ford, in short, could do in a few swift years that which requires generation for others to do.
 member of the staff of this newspaper is just returned from the south. He found it talking more about Ford than it talked of the war while the war/<was on. He was made to feel that with Ford to lead, the south was ready to give the north a race for in dustry. And he was made to feel also that if the Ford contract was rejected the south would feel disappointment almost as bitter as that which followed the defeat of the Con federacy
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