SKELETONS RATTLE IN REA CLOSET
McMillin, Miles
Public Power News Skeletons Rattle In REA Closet By MILES McMILLIN THE SENATE Agriculture subcommittee investigating the Rural Electrification Administration has had some extraordinary...
...At the time of Craig's resignation, Ellis wrote in the NRECA bulletin, "We are not happy over Dr...
...Curiously enough, however, the most damaging evidence against the Association leaders came from testimony which only indirectly bears on the controversy which brought about the investigation...
...The Association pressed for his removal...
...Craig Can't Be Located A report of these activities, he declared, had been made to Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard, whose department directs REA affairs...
...Clyde Ellis, executive manager of the Association, and Steve Tate, president, have consistently identified themselves with Craig and have stubbornly defended his policies...
...These charges are serious, of course, but it is only fair to point out that Ellis and those who stand with him have not yet had an opportunity to be heard by the committee...
...Craig, however, is said to have resigned under pressure some months later to accept a high position with the Copperweld Steel Company, one of the companies which Freeman charges profited greatly from Craig's preference for copper conduits...
...Before the committee began its probe the fight had narrowed down to one main issue—the retention or ouster of Harry Slattery as administrator of REA...
...Craig's resignation...
...Several times, he declared, he was forced to denounce these "schemes...
...This coercion which came from high REA officials, he said, was most common in the interim between the time that Carmody resigned as administrator and Slattery was appointed...
...Offered by Ward B. Freeman, former coordinator of engineering in REA, this testimony dealt with certain highhanded and curious practices of REA officials before the Association came into being...
...Craig, he said, had frankly admitted his intentions to John Becker, former Wisconsin REA official, and Becker had prepared a memorandum of his talk with Craig which was turned over to King...
...These charges have been previously reported and commented on in The Progressive...
...Freeman told the committee that rural electrification cooperatives had been coerced into buying expensive copper conduits for the transmission of power despite the fact that lower bids had been received from companies selling cheaper and more practical aluminum conduits...
...They were reviewed before the Senate investigators by John Carson, alert Washington representative of the Co-op League of the U. S. A. Carmody Tells Of 'Schemes' Briefly, King had accused the organizers of the Association with attempting to make political and financial capital out of REA...
...The testimony presented to the subcommittee has been particularly damaging to the cause of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, an organization of REA co-ops whose leaders have taken a prominent part in the bitter struggle that broke out within the REA last Spring and resulted in the Senate inquiry...
...Public Power News Skeletons Rattle In REA Closet By MILES McMILLIN THE SENATE Agriculture subcommittee investigating the Rural Electrification Administration has had some extraordinary allegations of irregular practices on the part of REA officials laid before it in the past fortnight...
...King's charges were given strong support during the hearings when John Carmody, former administrator of REA and now on the Maritime Commission, testified that he had known of efforts on the part of his subordinates in REA to use the program for private profit and political power...
...He declared that Robert Craig, former deputy administrator of REA and generally considered the moving spirit behind the formation of the Association, intended to use the organization and the REA program as an instrument to gain political and financial power...
...According to Freeman, Wickard ordered an investigation which corroborated Freeman's charges but nothing was ever done about it...
...At this writing it is not known for sure whether their story will be told...
...During this time Craig was virtually running REA...
...Both Ellis and Tate have recently entered military service and, although a subpoena has been issued to bring Craig before the committee, last reports have it that he has not been located...
...That these revelations reflect harmfully on the NRECA leaders there can be little doubt...
...Up until recently the hearings consisted largely of a rehash of the sensational charges leveled against the Association and some of its prominent personalities by Judsbn King, director of the National Popular Government League and one of the most prominent figures in the public power movementnn this country...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 3
