The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-10-16
MUSCLE SHOALS
(Knoxville Sentinel)

As is well known the Ford offer
 for Muscle Shoals was tremen-
 dously popular with the country
 and was credited with correspond
 ing popularity in the congress,
 which, it was believed at the
 time, would have certainly di-
 rected the sale or lease to be
 made to Mir. Ford if it had been
 permitted to vote on the probosi-
 ton. In the light of Secretary
 Weeks action in closing with the
 Alabama Power Company's offer
 between congresses or sessions of
 congress the suspicion seems to us
 justified that there was design
 and trickery in the fight that was
 successfully made in the last con-
 gress to delay vote on the Mus
 cle Shoals matter. Why was there
 so much said and done in the
 Sixty-Seventh congress looking to
 that body authorizing the sale or lease of the plant to MT. Ford,
 why did committees junket to
 Muscle Shoals at much expense of time and money to study the prop
 osition if the executive department of the government had the power
 to dispose of the plant, or any part
 Of 1t, by private sale, so to speak,
 without reference to congress?
 Whatever may be the merits of
 Mir Ford's charge as above stated, certain it is that congress pro- posed and MT. Weeks disposed, In this instance. Inaugurating the breaking up of this great govern ment plant for the consideration of three to four million dollars Is of piece with the haggling over | Ford's cash offer of five million | for the entire plant and annual | payments for the life of his lease | that would have more than reim- bursed the government for every | dollar it has put in the plant. | When we know that before Ford's | offer Muscle Shoals was thought | of as only good for junk in gov ernmental quarters we can see the | hyprocisy of this haggling. The real consideration involved in the matter for the American people had to do with MT. Ford's under taking with Muscle Shoals 10 demonstrate the cheapness with which power and fertilizer can be produced. Here was an enterprise | which, counting with MT. Ford's | well~known capacity and charac- teristfcs, meant untold billions of | value in facilities and comforts for the masses of the people in time | of peace, not to speak of conserv- ing this unparalleled munitions | plant intact for prompt use in time of war. Cheap fertilizer is one | prime essential that would go far | toward helping to pull the far mers out of the Slough of Despond | in which they have been stalled. But cheap power is an essential | which--if the money changers and monopolists who achieve control of the basic essentials of life and made the millions pay dearly for lose their grip on-will revolu- tionize domestic and industrial conditions with results that will make the hearts of the toiling and pinching masses sing for joy. For cheap power with electricity must sSrely be destined to redeem huma9ty from the curse of sordid | and grinding toll by it's labor saving and luxury producing mag ic if the total depravity principle | which sometimes seems ineradica- ble from the nature of man does not conspire and contrive to foil | the benevolent purposes of Provi- dence.
 We can readily conceive how MT. Ford, in control of this great power plant and with his peculiar genius for producing quantity and | quality and cheapening the cost of | commodities by the very enormity of his output. could vastly improve the conditions of the masses, though not without dealing a body | blow to capitalistic classes who | may now be in control of these | forces of nature as harnessed and | broken to service by the inventive 1 genius of man. Mir. Ford says his | offer Is still before congress and | he speaks as If he might yet get | Muscle Shoals, although he makes | reference to "the international | financiers, who, with the Alabama Power Company. have Muscle Shoals almost hopelessly in their grasp" If there is any way in which the great Muscle Shoals | plant may yet be conserved and, dedicated to the experiment of pro- ducing cheap power and nitrates for fertilizer as proposed by Mir. Ford, we trust it will be pressed and enforced over any and all mil nor objections and obstacles that | can be interposed to defeat if.