I have talked with Senator Milton Young, who visited the Russian plant very recently and saw it in operation some 75 miles from Moscow.

The National NRECA and the American Public Power Association have been the principal national advocates of an abundance of electricity in America. The farmers of this country have consistently supported the comprehensive development of our Nation's water resources. The commercial power companies have consistently opposed those developments. Yet the commercial power companies, which oppose an abundance of electricity, which is the very key to our military and economic strength, have set out upon a campaign to try to make it appear that the rural electric systems are something less than loyal Americans, that is, the people who compose them. Now we have the greatest propaganda document of all, this $430,000 task force and Hoover Commission report, which picks up and magnifies the power company line of propaganda against the comprehensive development of our water resources, and attempts to wreck the whole Federal power program.

Mr. Chairman, I do believe that the task force reports are just as much before you as the committee reports of the United States Congress are before the American people when matters of legislation are being considered. They are very closely paralleling each other. Therefore I hope we will be permitted to refer to the task force reports. Mr. JONES. Did you have any idea that the committee was not receiving testimony on the task force reports?

Mr. ELLIS. No, but I had not heard whether the task force reports were before you for consideration

Mr. JONES. Surely. We have recommendations in the task force report that the committee has paid particular attention to, such as disaster insurance.

Mr. ELLIS. Thank you.

Mr. JONES. And flood-control insurance. And the references in the Commission report itself in so many instances bring forward and adopt the philosophy and the thinking that was enunciated and is enunciated in the task force report.

Mr. ELLIS. Thank you, sir.

Mr. JONES. I do not sense that the task force was without authority and without the power to make recommendations to the Commission itself. Just because the Commission did not adopt all of the recommendations, it did not relieve us of examining all volumes of the task force report, the majority report of the Commission, and the minority report.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. Mr. Chairman, we have gone through this discussion in so many prior hearings and I am still of the opinion that this subcommittee is to study the recommendations submitted in the Hoover Commission report; that that is what we are concerned with. I did not bring it up at this hearing as I believe we have discussed it at such length, and I understand the chairman's position in the matter. also know he is chairman of the subcommittee, but I am still of the opinion that this subcommittee is to study the recommendations contained in the Hoover Commission report, and not the task force recommendations.

I

Mr. JONES. The Chair continues in its ruling that the task force report is properly before the committee, and we will receive testimony

and comments either approving or disapproving the task force report, or the minority report or the majority report of the Commission itself. Mr. LIPSCOMB. I would just like to point out further that in the calendar of the Committee on Government Operations, on page 10, in which appears the jurisdiction of subcommittees of the Committee on Government Operations, it says, "Special Subcommittee on Water Resources and Power. To study the Report of the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government on Water Resources and Power."

Mr. JONES. Of course, trying to study the Hoover Commission report without the task force report would be like condemning sin and not finding the culprit who committed it. So the Chair continues in its ruling and will elicit information that you might have on the task force report or on the Hoover Commission report itself.

Mr. ELLIS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to comment with regard to the public record of the Chairman of the Hoover Commission himself who, in his veto of one of the TVA bills, one of the Muscle Shoals bills, referred to it as "degeneration." I would refer also to his Madison Square Garden speech in 1925, in which he condemned Senator Norris, Senator Borah, and others as those "who sought to limit and not expand the freedom of man.'

The National Electric Light Association, which is the forerunner of the present Edison Electric Institute, both of which were organizations of the power companies, reproduced 50,000 copies of that speech and spread them throughout the United States.

I also refer to the Chairman's, Mr. Hoover's, Case Institute speech, early in this administration, which constitutes a pretty good blueprint of the Hoover Commission task force reports and the Hoover Commission recommendations.

Mr. JONES. Is that the Cleveland, Ohio, speech?

Mr. ELLIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. JONES. Do you have the text of that speech with you?
Dr. COCHRAN. It is attached as an exhibit, Mr. Jones.

Mr. ELLIS. I call your attention to a pamphlet entitled "Water Resources, Electric Power and National Policy," published by the National Association of Electric Companies. That is the lobbying organization of the power companies. It is dated May 1950 and it also contains a pretty good blueprint for both the Hoover Case Institute speech and the Hoover Commission recommendations and task force recommendations. My point is that they are one and the same; that the National Association of Electric Companies has called the turns, submitted the blueprints and fixed the policy of Chairman Hoover and his Commission.

I could read you at length from this pamphlet. By the way, this is also considered, I take it, as current by the National Association of Electric Companies, for a few days ago, when a group of college students visited the NAEC offices in Washington, this pamphlet was handed to them as the power company policy as of today.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Ellis, does that cognominate me as a Socialist because I believe in TVA?

Mr. ELLIS This, together with some other things which I shall submit, does, if you believe in TVA.

Mr. JONES. You know, I have been hearing that ever since I have been in Congress, about the people who believe in TVA being Social

If

ists. I have gone up and down north Alabama and throughout this valley, and I have not found my first Socialist-not the first one. they are down here they are rare creatures indeed, because you cannot apprehend them.

Mr. ELLIS. No, sir. I have not found any either.

One statement on page 8 of this pamphlet reads:

The first step by the Government agency having the primary responsibility for design and construction of multipurpose projects containing incidental power should be to afford the utilities of the area, both business-managed and municipal, an opportunity to build the powerhouse and install and operate the electric generating equipment at the proposed dams either with or without a Federal license

either with or without a Federal license at their own expense.

Mr. JONES. Let me see. Mr. ELLIS. Oh, yes. It amends many laws of the Congress. Mr. JONES. And if it were amended in that regard, it would mean the preference clause would go out of the window-the preference clause contained in every bit of legislation on the sale and disposition of the energy generated at federally owned installations. Even atomic power, because the Atomic Energy Act of last year or the year before last has a preference clause in it.

That amends the Federal Power Act.

Mr. ELLIS. Right, sir. Many laws of Congress do that.

Mr. JONES. So there has not been a single administration from Theodore Roosevelt through the present administration that has come out and asked for the repeal of the preference clause in any of the public acts that contain a preference clause.

Mr. ELLIS. I believe it is true some law passed in every one of those administrations, from 1906 to date, with preference clauses in themby some act of the Congress.

Referring to preference, they say that preference is a polite name for discrimination. Preference is the Homestead Act in the Federal power law. Abraham Lincoln had three principal issues in his campaign in 1860. One of them was a homestead law, along with the slavery question. The homestead law is American as truly as any one of the laws favoring the people. The land companies were gobbling up the land prior to 1860 and it was not available to the masses of people. It was an issue. You cannot homestead Grand Coulee or Wilson Dam.

It took a preference law to guarantee that the people could get any of the benefits, and even with the so-called preference clause, which should better have been called antimonopoly clause, in my opinion-even with it the rural electric cooperatives today are being discriminated against in not being able to buy power where they are asking to buy it. It is being sold to the power companies instead and they are buying roughly 20 percent of the Federal power today, and the rural electrics are buying less than 6 percent.

Who is being discriminated against?

It is my opinion that Chairman Hoover himself, biased and prejudiced, stacked the Hoover task force personnel, that is, the task force on water resources and power. It is my opinion that he knew-he most certainly should have known-that every single person on that task-force group was prejudiced against this program. At first they were not going to hold public hearings. They finally reconsidered and public hearings were held.

We went before them and we were treated like the remotest stepchild. They always heard the power companies first, I believe. They certainly did at New York City, where I appeared. They heard the power companies most of the day, and along toward the end of the day they finally got around to us. I was the first, I believe, of the rural electric and public groups to be heard, and they said to me and others, "Won't you please summarize your statement now, as we are running short of time? We will give you 15 minutes." I took a little longer than that, in fairness to them. They let me take it; but not much longer.

We did not have an opportunity to present our testimony properly. That was about the treatment we got all around the country.

The questions put to us were loaded. We never got a friendly question-not one. The questions were friendly to the power companies when they appeared, and to groups that appeared friendly to them.

I call your attention to Chairman Adm. Ben Moreell himself. Adm. Ben Moreell made a speech on November 10, 1952, before the Petroleum Institute in Chicago. He was the chairman of the board of Jones & Laughlin Steel. His speech was entitled, "To CommunismVia Majority Vote." I quoted Admiral Moreell's language at length and set out his 10 steps toward communism and listed with some emphasis public free education, and listed and commented at some length on the income tax, and went on to say or imply-and in my opinion he said that the income tax itself was communistic. The implication is that public education is also. That is the Ben Moreell whom Chairman Hoover named as chairman of this task force. We had a stacked jury from the time we started.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. JONES. Yes.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. Mr. Ellis, do you consider the Commission as such is a stacked Commission?

Mr. ELLIS. Oh, no, sir. They are fine commissioners.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. How do you account for the fact that there were actually only four dissents to the Hoover Commission Report on Water Resources and Power?

Mr. ELLIS. How do I account for the fact that there were only four?

Mr. LIPSCOMB. Four dissents out of the entire Commission, which you say yourself is not a stacked Commission.

Mr. ELLIS. No. I say it was stacked.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. The Commission?

Mr. ELLIS. No. I beg your pardon. The task force was stacked. Mr. LIPSCOMB. And the Commission developed their reports and recommendations?

Mr. ELLIS. Yes.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. And out of that entire Commission there were only four dissents. How do you account for that?

Mr. ELLIS. Mr. Hoover did not name the Commission and I was not commenting on the personnel of the Commission; and if I said that I want the testimony corrected.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. No. I know you didn't say it but I am wondering. You are going back to the task force and I want to bring you back to the Commisison report, as far as I am concerned, and find out what

your opinion is of the Commission's report, and why there were not more dissents, if everything is wrong with the report that you say there is.

Mr. ELLIS. Let me comment then some on the Commission. I had not intended to do so.

The Commission itself was stacked, in my opinion. The Commission was not a bipartisan Commission, as was the first Hoover Commission. I do not know and I have no idea why there were not more dissents than there were. I was shocked that there were not more dissents than there were, but this I believe. The reports are voluminous. The power issue is an intricate and involved one. We cannot keep up with the power picture of the United States, we who work at it all of the time and do nothing else. I believe that it may be possible some of the members of the Commission did not have the time. They were busy men, all of them, and it may be possible they did not have the time to properly study these reports. I would like at least to hope that had they known what some of the propaganda, the veiled propaganda, was saying, they would have dissented. More of them would have.

Mr. LIPSCOMB. In reading the report as a member of the committee I have read all of the dissents with interest. James A. Farley wrote a dissent. Senator McClellan did not issue one. Therefore, I am at a loss to realize why, if the report is as bad as it is, when we had such men on the Commission as that, why we did not have more dissents.

Mr. ELLIS. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I would just be embarrassed to comment further on the personnel of the Commission. My real intent was to comment on the stacked task-force group, because there is where we really get down to the real crux of the matter and begin to see the motive and the result which they intended and achieved. That is my opinion. I do not know, Mr. Lipscomb

Mr. LIPSCOMB. I did not mean to embarrass you and I would not press the question any further if you were going to be embarrassed about it.

Mr. JONES. The question, as I understand it, that you directed to the witness, is whether or not he can speak for the members of the Commission as to why there were not more dissents. It seems to me that would be a difficult question for the witness to give an answer to, on the mental reasoning and logic of those on the Commission.

I understood you were testifying upon the fact that the taskforce group made public utterances that would indicate that they were not free of prejudice prior to their appointment on the task force. Mr. ELLIS. Right, sir.

Mr. JONES. Are there any further questions, Mr. Lipscomb?

Mr. ELLIS. I would like to call the committee's attention to the fact that REA was born here in the Tennessee Valley. REA was not born in Washington, D. C. The first rural electric cooperative was organized in the back of a furniture store here in Corinth, Miss., with TVA officials and rural and city people there attending, I am told. George Norris, the father of both TVA and, along with Sam Rayburn, of REA, stated-and I think Lister Hill was coauthor of the TVA bill too along with Norris--he was then in the House-he