authority, but they have the power to follow through, so to speak, just as the Tennessee Valley Authority has today.

Under the Mansfield bill, on the other hand, there are set up primary planning agencies, with the exception of power, and in order for any agency to undertake the administration of a project, special legislation would be required.

In other words, under the Rankin bill, although one administrator would direct the affairs of each Authority-with the exception of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has three directors-each Authority is fashioned along the lines of the T. V. A.

Under the Rankin bill we are taking advantage of the experiences we have had and are proposing to reduce the number of directors from three to one, or appointing an administrator, we will say, instead of three directors; while under the Mansfield bill, each regional conservation director, with the support of an advisory committee, would submit plans for projects to the President. And then, as I said, it would require legislation to carry them out.

One reason why we think it is unnecessary to do this planning in advance is that every stream in the United States has already been surveyed; and then, besides, if a planning board should make a report to the power Authority appointed under it, the chances are that the power Authority would have to go over the same identical field and do the same work, and probably do many things that had not been recommended by the planning board.

The distinction between the two bills lies further in the fact that the Rankin bill creates complete operating units, whereas the Mansfield bill, after plans are made, would probably rely upon existing agencies of the Government to carry them out.

For instance, the Tennessee Valley Authority carries out its own program; it does not have to rely on other governmental agencies, and therefore avoids many of the conflicts that would be bound to arise if they did have to depend on other governmental agencies.

This is true, with the exception of the distribution of power, for which special provision is made, because no one agency of the Government now concerns itself with that matter.

Specifically, the distinctions between the two bills are as follows: The Rankin bill provides for a single administrator in each Authority.

The Mansfield bill provides for a Regional Planning Director and a Regional Conservation Committee, which will be advisory in character; it provides for the creation by Executive order of corporate regional power Authorities directed by a Regional Power Administrator, with the advice of a Regional Power Board.

Mr. BEITER. How does that compare with the Norris bill?

Mr. RANKIN. The Norris bill and the Rankin bill are facsimiles, with about three or four differences.

The Norris bill provides for three directors for each Authority, such as we have in the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Rankin bill provides for only one director or administrator for each Authority. The Norris bill also provides that when power is sold to a private power company, to be resold for profit, the Authority "may" designate the retail rates. The Rankin bill says it "shall", that is, the Authority shall designate the retail rates.

Mr. BEITER. Then the Norris bill and the Mansfield bill are the same?

Mr. RANKIN. The Norris bill and the Rankin bill are exactly alike, with these minor exceptions. You might say they are the same; with the exception of the reduction of the number of directors from three to one for each of the Authorities, the Norris bill and the Rankin bill are alike. The fact is, they are verbatim copies of each other, with the exception of the minor changes which I have suggested.

The Rankin bill provides that each Authority will establish its own rates for power distribution, including retail rates to the ultimate

consumers.

The Mansfield bill provides that power rates are subject to the approval of the Federal Power Commission.

Mr. COLMER. Are not the rates, under the existing setup, subject to revision by the Commission?

Mr. RANKIN. No. The only rates that have to be approved now, I will say to the gentleman from Mississippi, the only rates that have to be approved now by the Federal Power Commission are the wholesale rates on power that is sold in interstate commerce, not the retail rates.

Frankly, I think that is a lame place in the law. I think the retail rates should have been included.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has the right to fix the retail rates, and it has done it in my town and in other municipalities in that area. In other words, it has applied the yardstick.

I want to give that same power to each one of these authorities, so that when power is sold, that is generated on the Ohio River, on the Columbia River, on the Colorado River, or on any other river in the United States where the Government owns one of these dams, that it shall be sold to the ultimate consumer at reasonable rates-such as the T. V. A. yardstick rates.

Mr. DONDERO. Will the gentleman explain that where the Government does not sell current in interstate commerce, the rate-fixing body is still the public utilities commission in each of the States?

Mr. RANKIN. Yes, sir. As one Member of Congress said a few years ago, I want to be brutally frank.

It is a violent supposition to assume that the State utilities commissions will regulate rates. It is a more reasonable assumption to say that they are largely regulated themselves, by the utilities.

They have been so powerful, these power companies, and these holding companies that have been built up since 1889, when the common law principle that prohibited one corporation from owning stock in another was wiped out, these gigantic, overlapping holding companies have grown up and become so powerful that the average utility commission in the United States about as well might not exist, so far as regulating power rates is concerned.

I am going to take my own State, for illustration. I do not attribute to anybody else's State, or commissions, or authorities, any more weakness than I do to my own.

We have never been able to get anywhere because these power companies have been so powerful with their lobbies, they have been so relentless, they have been so corrupt in bringing pressure of every kind to bear, that we have never been able to give the utilities commission of the State of Mississippi the right to regulate power rates at all.

They can charge, in the town of my distinguished friend from Mississippi, Mr. Colmer-the power company can charge a dollar a kilowatt-hour tomorrow. They can do that in Columbus, Aberdeen, Starkville, Macon, and other cities in the lower end of my own district, and there is no power on earth to stop them.

While it is a fact that these commissions have some good men on them, as a rule the average State utility commission has been a farce and a failure.

The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Eckert) is familiar with conditions formerly existing in his own State. I showed you here the other day that the people of Pennsylvania, the consumers of electricity, are overcharged more than 85 million dollars a year for electric light and power.

The utilities had become so powerful in Pennsylvania, and the utilities commissions had become so subservient, as have other branches of the Government, perhaps, that the utilities owned 100 million dollars' worth of real estate in Pennsylvania that was escaping taxation, with enormous office buildings that were rented for profit, and the taxes were passed on to the consumers that they were overcharging, to the small-home owners, the farmers, the merchants, and other consumers.

So I say there is only one chance and I have said this on the floor of the House, on the stump, and through the press, and over the radio, so I do not think anybody can ever doubt my attitudethere is only one hope of their getting this power at what it is worth, and that is for the governmental agency that generates it to fix the retail price. The State commissions will never do it.

Mr. COLMER. May I ask the gentleman another question?
Mr. RANKIN. Yes.

Mr. COLMER. Referring to the statement you made, using my town as an illustration, do I understand that there is no governmental agency and I mean by that State agency-in the State of Mississippi that can pass upon those rates? For instance, do not the commissioners, or the municipalities, have something to say about it? Mr. RANKIN. In answer to my distinguished colleague from Mississippi who has always manifested great interest in this question, I want to say that during the last Congress Senator Johnson of California brought out a bill that would prevent any local body from being enjoined in a Federal court when they attempted to fix rates. The bill passed and became a law.

Then we began to try to get some relief in Mississippi, and I will switch from the gentleman's district to my own and show what happened.

We will take, for instance, the town of Aberdeen. We found that the railroad commission, which is the only utilities commission that we have, had absolutely no right to regulate power rates. The only place we found in Mississippi where that power rested was the common-law right bestowed upon the municipal authorities, as the gentleman suggested.

This Johnson bill, which I helped to put through the House, provided that where they had proper notice, and so forth, the utility had no right to enjoin in the Federal court.

The town council, or the board of aldermen, of the city of Aberdeen undertook to regulate the rates. They were paying three times

what they were paying in the town of Amory, 13 miles away. Amory was getting its power from the Tennessee Valley Authority.

They summoned the power company's representatives, and they readily appeared. The case was tried, the town won, and the board of aldermen fixed the rates.

The power company went into the Federal court and enjoined them on the ground that, while they gave notice to the power company and the power company appeared and its representatives attended the hearings, yet because the section of the statute of Mississippi that provided for notice did not say what kind of notice, that the notice was invalid, and the Court sustained issued injunction.

We then went to the Legislature of Mississippi to get that statute amended. And the statute was amended by an almost unanimous vote of the legislature, but the present Governor vetoed it, leaving the people of Mississippi completely at the mercy of the power companies. So that leaves us in Mississippi as helpless as people in other States throughout the country.

They can charge you $5 per kilowatt-hour if they want to, and there is no power on earth that can call them to account.

Mr. DONDERO. Have you a paper in Aberdeen by the name of the Abderdeen Examiner?

Mr. RANKIN. Yes.

Mr. DONDERO. Is it not true that through your efforts you obtained for them a Government loan of $119,000 for a municipal plant, of which 45 percent was a grant, or outright gift, or $53,550, as a payment toward your new municipal plant, which caused you to reduce your rate?

Mr. RANKIN. No; I will answer the first part of your question first. The people of Aberdeen undertook to put in a municipal power system. They voted on the proposition and it carried by a vote of 14 to 1, in spite of all the influence and the money that the power companies could expend. In spite of all that, that election was carried by 14 to 1. They made an application to the P. W. A. for a loan and grant, and that was enjoined in the Federal court. The lower Federal court denied the injunction, but unfortunately permitted the power company to appeal, with a supersedeas, which is now pending, or the case is now pending in the circuit court of appeals at New Orleans. Mr. DONDERO. Did you have a private utility there prior to this? Mr. RANKIN. The Mississippi Power Co., which is a subsidiary of the Commonwealth & Southern, owns the distribution system. They acquired it in a way that would shock this committee if they could understand the procedure they went through. They first called for an election, and the people voted against selling their plant. Then they went out and hired all of the lawyers except the ones who represented the city, and paid those lawyers, as I am reliably informed, $22,000, in that small town of about 5,000 people, to help overpersuade three members of the board to override the mayor and sell them that plant. That was when they were trying to get control of this country, 15 years ago.

They finally bought it for $108,000. They went to Corinth, a town of the same size, and paid $750,000 for one, and then they went to West Point, a town 18 miles from Aberdeen, and about the same size, and offered them $1,250,000. It was not a question of what

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they were worth; it was a question of buying the birthrights of the people of that section of the country.

Of course, the people revolted. They are overcharged enough now to pay that $108,000 every year that rolls around, and I will prove that by the bills of the people who reside there, to any reasonable

man.

Therefore, they attempted, as other municipalities have done, to get this loan and grant to enable them to put in a distribution system, or to purchase back the one that was wrung from them.

Mr. DONDERO. What became of the private plant?

Mr. RANKIN. They dismantled the machinery. They usually do that. They dismantle the facilities which generate the power and take them out, take them away.

But the people are going to win that fight in Aberdeen, I will say to the gentleman from Michigan. This is a fair sample of the way people are being treated all over the country by the power interests.

Mr. COLDEN. The gentleman from Mississippi stated that his bill provides that the administrator shall have the authority to regulate the retail price of electricity sold to private utilities.

Mr. RANKIN. Yes.

Mr. COLDEN. If that were not placed in the law, would it not destroy the purpose and the use of public power projects?

Mr. RANKIN. Absolutely. Will the gentleman excuse me a minute? Mr. COLDEN. Certainly.

Mr. RANKIN. In answer to the question of the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Dondero, I have here before me the rates paid in Aberdeen and in Amory. Those towns are about 12 or 13 miles apart. In Aberdeen, 25 kilowatt-hours cost $2.13; in Amory that costs 75 cents.

In Aberdeen, 40 kilowatt-hours cost $2.95; in Amory that costs $1.20.

In Aberdeen, 150 kilowatt-hours cost $6.60, and in Amory, $3.50. The rate for 25 kilowatt-hours a month for the residential consumer in Aberdeen is 8.52 cents per kilowatt-hour, and in Amory it is 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. Amory uses T. V. A. power and sell it at the T. V. A. yardstick rates, such as we have in Tupelo, in New Albany, and other places.

Let me say this in answer to my friend from California, Mr. Colden. There is a fair example.

I told you the other day that the private power companies made a contract in 1930 to purchase power from the Government at Muscle Shoals at 1.56 mills per kilowatt-hour. That is what it cost them.

Last year, the last year that contract was in effect, they purchased 555 million kilowatt-hours, which cost them on an average 1.56 mills per kilowatt-hour. The rate at which they were selling it at Aberdeen before 4 years ago was 10 cents. We forced a reduction from 10 cents to 8.52. If a man in Aberdeen used 30 kilowatt-hours it cost him $3, whereas it cost the Commonwealth & Southern only about 5 cents. In the area around Muscle Shoals, the area of the tri-cities Florence, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia, the average domestic consumption was only 30 kilowatt-hours a month 4 years ago and it cost him $3. In other words, a thousand kilowatt-hours cost those little consumers $100 a month, while it cost the power company only $1.56. That is what would be going on now if it were not for the T. V. A.