flows and the more freely it flows, the greater are its benefits to mankind. This St. Lawrence power will be produced in an area up there that has neither coal, gas, oil, wood, or raw materials. I am speaking of the States of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. They have no coal, no gas, no oil, no wood, to amount to anything, very little water power, and practically no raw materials. Also this crazy communistic FEPC fastened on some of those States, which they have, is running their industries to other sections of the country.

I am taking the same position I took 10 years ago when I was on this committee. This was then the Rivers and Harbors Committee. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dondero) was on it with me, and probably several other gentlemen who are here today. I took the same position then I am taking now. I am not in favor of turning this power over to any one State. I went through that battle along the Columbia, and I went through that battle in the TVA area. I believe it should be distributed to all areas within the distribution radius.

If that is done, I want to show you what it might do for the people of that area. Last year, or I should say in 1949, the State of Connecticut alone was overcharged $42,000,000 for its electric power; New York, $293,000,000; Massachusetts, $93,000,000. All the States in that area, including Pennsylvania, were overcharged $646,000,000— according to the Ontario rates just across the line.

I am not using the TVA rates now. I am using the Ontario rates, just across the river. If they got their power at the rate the people of Ontario get theirs, from those ice-bound rivers, they would have saved over $646,000,000 in 1949. Leave the State of Pennsylvania out. That is one self-sustaining State, I will say, because it has coal, gas, oil, wood, and water power-especially water power and coal. Still, your overcharges in that amounted to $473,000,000 in 1949.

Now, in 10 years that would amount to more than $4,000,000,000. I know the opposition to all these developments usually combine the power trusts, the railroads, and the coal interests. They usually combined against all these developments. If that power were generated, our half of it would be 6 billion kilowatt-hours a year. Now, remember, that is almost one-sixth of what we were using in the entire United States when I came to Congress in 1921.

If that power were distributed throughout that area and used as a yardstick, it will bring the power rates in that area down enough to pay for the whole development in 10 years or less.

There are some people I know who say those States are too remote from this dam to use this power. It is 250 miles from this project to Boston, Mass. I have just given you the overcharges here in Massachusetts $93,000,000 a year. Two hundred and fifty miles is no distance to transmit power.

It is 268 miles from Boulder Dam to Los Angeles, Calif., and yet the Boulder Dam power is delivered at Los Angeles. If these people got their power at the rate they get it at Los Angeles, they would at least save $300,000,000 or $400,000,000 a year. I am speaking about the people in that distribution area.

It is 258 miles from Niagara Falls to Windsor, Canada, right across the river from Detroit, Mich., Windsor, Canada, gets her power from Niagara Falls, or the Niagara River. This Ontario Power Commis

sion transmits it 258 miles and delivers it to Windsor. If the people of the State of Michigan got their power at the same rates that Windsor does, they would have saved $117,000,000 on their light and power bills last year or in 1949.

We have in this country 394 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power going to waste every year. That power belongs to the American people. It could be firmed up to the peak of the average year with 116 billion kilowatt-hours of steam power. That would make 510 billion kilowatt-hours. Add that to your 339 billion you are getting now, and you would have enough electricity to run all the machinery, run all the factories, and run every business establishment, and electrify, and even heat, every home in America. A wealth richer than all the diamond mines of Golconda-the greatest wealth in America outside of the soil from which we live, is our water power.

I have put in 30 years here trying to get it developed and delivered to the people at rates they can afford to pay. In 1933 a thousand kilowatt-hours of electricity a month cost a consumer in my home town $66.10. Today it costs the enormous sum of $7.10-a slight drop of $59. We are paying twice as much for it wholesale as the power company was paying for the same power at the same place then. I believe they got it at Muscle Shoals and we get ours at Pickwick Dam. That is the only difference. We are paying more in lieu of taxes than they paid at that time in any city of that size anywhere in that area.

So what I am trying to do is get this power developed, and get it to the American people at what it is worth. In 1934, we only had about 10 percent of our farms electrified. Japan had 90 percent; Germany had 90 percent; France had 94 percent; Italy had 94 percent. Today we have probably above 90 percent of the farms in this country electrified.

But here are five or six States that have no coal, no gas, no oil, and a limited amount of water power-Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. There is no coal and no natural gas, and no oil there. I know that they will say they can buy gas in Mississippi and Texas now. Yes; but if some of those pipelines should blow up, then they would have a freeze. I remember about 2 years ago one of our friends from Massachusetts was raising sand because they could not get oil for heating purposes in that area.

There you have those States without coal, gas or oil, and with the water power undeveloped. For that reason I have gone all the way down the line for this development. I know if this project is built that it will pay for itself in a few years. I know that the Tennessee Valley Authority is paying for itself, and I know the Columbia River development is paying for itself. I know Boulder Dam is paying for itself.

To sit here and let this great wealth of power run waste and wanton to the sea is something that I cannot condone.

I know they tell you that this waterway is frozen up 5 and 6 months in the year. I am not sure about that. You members of the committee from that area know more about that than I do.

I know the same elements that are fighting this project are also fighting the development of the Tennessee-Tombigbee inland waterway to furnish a slack water route from the Gulf to the Great Lakes,

and to Pittsburgh, Pa., and all other points on the Ohio River-the cheapest transportation on earth. Your iron ore in Venezuela will be available to those poeple who are in the steel business in that area. And besides, it will not be a one-way traffic. It would be a two-way traffic, not only to Pittsburgh but all the way up to Chicago, all the way up to Minneapolis and St. Paul, and as far up the Missouri River as they can navigate.

I want to call your attention to something that I read into the record a year or two ago. Pittsburgh, Pa., is the greatest steel producing place in the world, I suppose. It would cost a billion dollars to move the steel works out of Pittsburgh. Unless there is some cheaper way to get iron ore in there such as this Tennessee-Tombigbee will provide, that may happen in your day and mine. They may have to move those steel works to the Gulf coast.

The traffic last year on the Ohio River amounted to 16 million tons more than it was on the Panama Canal. You know the railroads tied the Panama Canal into knots after we got it built, and got a bill through here to force us to pay tolls on our coastwise traffic. Under the original bill that was not true. No foreign country can do a coastwise trade. So, we have to pay tolls just as if we were in China, on our own canal. That is the Panama Canal. We would not have that to do on these two projects here, the St. Lawrence and the TennesseeTombigbee.

The traffic on the Monongahela in 1949 amounted to 6 million tons more than it did on the Panama Canal.

Now, we are coming to a new day.

We do not know what is ahead of us. I know what will happen if we get into war and are forced back on to our own soil to defend our own country. If we keep on trying to fight everybody else's wars in the world that will happen to us someday. It has happened to every other country, and it will come to us if we keep it up.

You know, I live in a country that lost a war one time. I know what it means. We lost the War Between the States and went through a horrible period of reconstruction. I know what it means. And if we keep on trying to fight everyone else's wars we are going to lose one and be forced back onto our own soil some day to defend our own homes. When you do that, your traffic into this area is going to be far more important than anybody realizes today.

I think there is no question but that the iron ore in the Mesabi Range is rapidly diminishing, playing out. You gentlemen from that area may know more about that than I do, but that is my information. You are going to have to get your iron ore from Labrador or from Venezuela, or both. That is not the only thing. The great Aluminum Co. of America has its plants along the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. Ninety-five percent of the buaxite that company uses to make aluminum comes from South America now. All your salt, sulfur, cotton, lumber, and many other raw materials come from down on the Gulf coast or from the Southern States.

I am saying this now in connection with my argument that this project here, the Tennessee-Tombigbee, which is already half built or more than half built or will be when they finish the Demopolis Dam, which is now under construction, should be speeded up with all possible haste, and I think the same thing applies to this canal here, because, as I said, we are going to have to protect our own country, and we are

going to have to feed our own people. We are going to have to look after our own affairs.

Of course the Tennessee-Tombigbee has one advantage; it does not freeze up. This route does not freeze up at all, but will be open the year round and it will provide a two-way traffic. It saves the swift current of the Mississippi for our downstream traffic, and then we have a slack-water route returning to the Great Lakes to all points on the Ohio River up to Pittsburgh, Pa., as well as to all points on the Missouri, the upper Mississippi, the Illinois, and the Tennessee. I did not come here to try to take up the time of the committee. I want to express to you my sentiments and my views on this proposition which have not changed in the 10 years since we had this proposition up here before.

I know some of you will say it will cost a great deal to transmit that power over to these other States. Do you know how much it costs? Four-tenths of a mill a kilowatt-hour for every hundred miles on an average. That was testified to by the Army engineers. They made a report in 1930 on the Muscle Shoals proposition. Their record shows the costs of transmission amount to an average of four-tenths of a mill a kilowatt-hour for every hundred miles.

When we had this St. Lawrence proposition up before we had the Army engineers and a man by the name of Tallemy representing the Niagara Planning Commission. He was on the other side, but he was one of the best engineers I ever cross-examined. They all admitted that power could be transmitted at an average of four-tenths of a mill a kilowatt-hour for every hundred miles.

That power can be produced, according to the testimony of both sides then, at 1.77 mills a kilowatt-hour. Then it could be transmitted that 250 miles to Boston for a mill a kilowatt-hour. That is only 2.77 mills a kilowatt-hour, which is a little more than half what we pay for electricity wholesale in my town.

If your consumers got their electricity in New York at the same rate we get it in Tupelo, Miss., they would save not $293,000,000 but $299,000,000 a year. The people of Massachusetts would save more than $95,000,000 a year.

I insist that that provision go into the bill, whatever bill you pass, that this power is to be distributed throughout the distribution radius and not shut these people in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts and these other States out.

Mr. DONDERO. That provision I think is in all of the bills.

Mr. RANKIN. I shall insist also on giving them the right, your authority, or whoever is in charge, to fix the maximum retail rates. That ought to be done by all means. I know some people think that we ought to develop water power and then turn it over to a group who have enough water in their stock to float the Navy, some of them, and let them plunder the ultimate consumer. That is not my view at all. If you will make that power distributable throughout the distribution radius and do as we did in the Tennessee Valley Authority area, give the States, counties, municipalities, and cooperative power associations preference, and then have the Government, or the authority in control to fix the maximum retail rates, you will in all probability break the power rates in that area enough to pay for the whole development in 5 or 6 years certainly within 10 years.

Mr. ANGELL. Under this bill the power facilities are turned over to the State of New York.

Mr. RANKIN. I am not for that. That is exactly what I was afraid of. I am not for turning it over to any one State.

I will say to the gentleman from Oregon that when we were developing the Columbia River I insisted that that power be distributed within the area, within the distribution radius. I remember they came before the House and proposed to cut off Grand Coulee Dam and make a low dam out of it. I led the fight against it. They said, "They do not need that power." I said, "When?" They said, "Now." I said, "How about 25 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now?"

Where would we have been if it had not been for the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Columbia River development in the last war? There is where our atomic bombs were developed, and there is where they will be developed the next time, wherever this great abundance of water power is available.

Mr. ANGELL. Mr. Rankin, reading the report of the President's Commission on Water Power, I see it states that 40 percent of the potential hydroelectric power is in the Columbia Basin in the continental United States.

Mr. RANKIN. I do not know what percentage, but I do know that it is one of the greatest power-producing streams on earth. That is my understanding. Am I correct?

Mr. ANGELL. That is correct. And only less than 10 percent of it is developed at the present time.

Mr. RANKIN. Yes. And it is making a new life for those people out there. It is developing that area as those people never dreamed of when I visited that stream in 1923. I went out to where Grand Coulee is now situated and went down to Tacoma. I was in Tacoma, Wash., the day when we heard of the death of Claude Kitchens, the Democratic leader in the House.

Since that time there has been such development in that great western country, as nobody could have dreamed of at that time. The same thing has happened in the Tennessee Valley area, and the same thing will happen in this area, through not to that extent, because there is not as much water power here as there is out in the Columbia River Basin or down in the Tennessee Valley area. But it will certainly give those people a yardstick to show what electricity is worth and save them hundreds of millions of dollars annually on their light and power bills.

We are living in an electric age. It is certainly poor statesmanship for us to let this great wealth of water power go to waste and deny to the people the benefits of cheap electricity and all the benefits that cheap electricity would bring them. I know what it has meant to the farmers. Ninety-five percent of the farmers in my district get electricity in their homes. They get it from the TVA at the TVA rates. The poorest people in the world, and the people who need such relief worse than anybody else probably, are the poor people in the large cities; because they do not have the opportunity to grow things out of the ground.

You have some large cities in that area where the people are paying through the nose for their electricity at enormous rates. If If you will develop this water power and provide a yardstick and make it distributable within the distribution radius and not give anybody a monopoly on it, you will have rendered the greatest service to the people of that area that I can imagine.