Evening star., 1934-11-20
Blue Shoes in Tupelo.

The casual observer of events in
this country might not see any con-
nection between the Governments
great Tennessee Valley program and
the previous difficulties of residents of
Tupelo, Miss, In being able to dis
tinguish between blue and black shoes.
But there is a very real relationship,
and the Presidents speech on Sunday
to the people Of Tupelo offers an
opportunity to point it out. The
President in telling the people of
Tupelo that he was using them as
text" for his sermon on power, said
that peoples eyes are upon YOU
because what you are doing
here Is going to be copied in eyery
State of the Union before we get
through"
What the people Of Tupelo are
doing can be told in a few words.
They are buying more electricity.
Tupelo has operated a municipal plant
Tor some time. But it was the first
city in the Tennessee Valley to sign
a contract for power generated at
Muscle Shoals, and, according to the
T. v. A., the city ever since has been
the subject of much thought and study
on the part Of legislators, economists
and engineers, because performance
at Tupelo is taken as illustrative" of
the execution Of T. v. AS power
policy and program.
In March, the first month of the
municipal plants operation in resale
OF cheap Muscle Shoals power.
Tupelo's 1905 customers Presidential,
commercial and industriaD were buy
ing 36S,768 kilowatt hours of elec-
tricity. BY the end of September sixty
four new customers had been added
and the consumption of electricity had
risen to 639,988 kilowatt hours. In
residential use of electricity the gain
was more than one hundred per cent,
fact which President Roosevelt
noted in his speech of Sunday. This
residential consumption may be COM
pared with the XVIII. consumption in
homes of the metropolitan area of
Washington, excluding Virginia, which
is 94,113,oo0.
Tupelo's new rates, reduced by
T. V. A. well below those previously
charged by the municipally-ow owned
plant, have increased consumption.
But another factor has been the pres
ence of Government agents in Tupelo
who have been busy selling" the
idea of greater use of electricity to
the people. The T. v. AS shock
troops, in other words, have been aug
mented by the moppers-up of the
E. H. F. A. (the Electric Home and
Farm Authority. They have been
boosting the sale of electricity and
electrical appliances in Tupelo, with
the results that, as q recent Gov
ernment announcement summarized
them:
A department store has more than
tripled its lighting. A bank Is INSTALL
inU ord ;~I,
station chain has frightened ap-
proaches and interiors. The City of
Tupelo is experimenting with new
white-way lights.
But somehow the most convincing
evidence Of better lighted Tupelo is
furnished, in the same Government
publication, by the direct quotation
from an unnamed clerk in the R. w.
Reed Company's store, which sells
dry goods, shoes and clothing for men,
women and children. Interviewed by
a Government agent, the clerk put it
this way:
Before we got the new lights you
couldn't tell the difference between a
blue and black shoe in our shoe de-
partment. Often we had to ask our
customers to step to the door to see
the color of shoe they were buying.
And now, says the United States
Government, "in that shoe depart
ment today you know when it's blue"
And that, it might be added, is
progress.